RnR is a command-line tool to securely rename multiple files and directories that supports regular expressions.
Features
- Batch rename files and directories.
- Automated checks to avoid unwanted file collisions, removals or overwrites.
- Use regexp, including capture groups.
- Include directories recursively.
- Create backup files.
- Create and read operations from dump file.
- Undo operations from dump file.
- Exclude/include hidden files.
- Linux, Mac and Windows support, including terminal coloring.
- Extensive unit testing.
- Select limit of replacements.
- Convert UTF-8 file names to ASCII representation.
Install
Binaries
GitHub Releases
You can download binaries from latest release page, choose the compressed file corresponding to your platform. These compressed files contain the executable and other additional content such as completion files (Bash, Zsh, fish and PowerShell).
Arch Linux
A package is available in the AUR (rnr) to install latest version of RnR on Arch Linux.
From Source
RnR is written in Rust. You can build it from source using Cargo.
From git repository
git clone https://github.com/ismaelgv/rnr .
cargo install
From Crates.io
cargo install rnr
Usage
Options
USAGE:
rnr [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
...
rnr [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
FLAGS:
-b, --backup Generate file backups before renaming
-n, --dry-run Only show what would be done (default mode)
--dump Force dumping operations into a file even in dry-run mode
-f, --force Make actual changes to files
-h, --help Prints help information
-x, --hidden Include hidden files and directories
-D, --include-dirs Rename matching directories
--no-dump Do not dump operations into a file
-r, --recursive Recursive mode
-s, --silent Do not print any information
-V, --version Prints version information
OPTIONS:
--color
Set color output mode [default: auto] [possible values: always, auto, never] -d, --max-depth
Set max depth in recursive mode -l, --replace-limit
Limit of replacements, all matches if set to 0 [default: 1] ARGS:
Expression to match (can be a regex)
Expression replacement
... Target paths SUBCOMMANDS: from-file Read operations from a dump file help Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s) to-ascii Replace all file name chars with ASCII chars. This operation is extremely lossy.
Default behavior
- Checks all operations to avoid overwriting existing files.
- Dry-run by default.
- Only UTF-8 valid input arguments and filenames.
- Works on files and symlinks (ignores directories).
- Accepts multiple files as arguments.
- Accepts a regex to generate matches. These expressions have same limitations of
regexcrate. You can check regex syntax here. It supports numbered and named capture groups. - If max depth is not provided to recursive mode, it is assumed infinite.
- Does not generate backups.
- Output is colored (only ANSI terminals).
- Ignore hidden files and directories.
- Dump all operations into a file in force mode. This dump file can be used to undo these operations from
from-filesubcommand. - Number of replacements set to one.
Examples
- Rename a list of files
- Recursive rename
- Undo/redo operations using dump file
- Create backup files before renaming
- Convert UTF-8 file names to ASCII
- Advanced regex examples
WINDOWS NOTE: In the examples that use *, you need to expand the wildcard in PowerShell, for example: rnr a b (Get-Item ./*). This is not supported in cmd.exe.
Rename a list of files
You can pass a list of files to be renamed as arguments:
rnr -f file renamed ./file-01.txt ./one/file-02.txt ./one/file-03.txt
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── one
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── renamed-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── one
├── file-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
└── renamed-03.txt
Include directories
Directories are ignored by default but you can also include them to be renamed using the option -D.
rnr -f -D foo bar ./*
Original tree
.
├── foo
│ └── foo.txt
└── foo.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── bar
│ └── foo.txt
└── bar.txt
Multiple replacements
The replacement limit is set to 1 by default, but you can configure this limit to replace multiple non-overlapping matches. All matches will be replaced if this option is set to 0.
rnr -f -l 0 o u ./*
Original tree
.
├── foo.txt
├── foofoo.txt
├── foofoofoo.txt
└── foofoofoofoo.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── fuu.txt
├── fuufuu.txt
├── fuufuufuu.txt
└── fuufuufuufuu.txt
Combination with other UNIX tools
You can combine rnr with other UNIX tools using pipes to pass arguments.
Find files older than 1 day and rename them
find . -type f +mtime 1 | xargs rnr -f file renamed
Read list of files from a file
cat file_list.txt | xargs rnr -f file rename
file_list.txt content:
file-01.txt
one/file-02.txt
one/file-03.txt
Recursive rename
If recursive (-r) option is passed, rnr will look for al files in the path recursively without depth limit.
rnr -f -r file renamed ./
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── one
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── two
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── three
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
├── renamed-03.txt
└── one
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
├── renamed-03.txt
└── two
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
├── renamed-03.txt
└── three
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
└── renamed-03.txt
Recursive rename with max directory depth
Similarly, you can set a maximum directory depth in combination with recursive operations.
rnr -f -r -d 2 file renamed ./
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── one
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── two
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── three
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
├── renamed-03.txt
└── one
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
├── renamed-03.txt
└── two
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
├── file-03.txt
└── three
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Recursive rename including directories and hidden files
rnr ignore hidden files by default to speed up the operations and avoid problems with some particular directories like .git/ or .local/. You can include hidden files passing -x option. Also, you can use include directories -D option with -r too.
rnr -f -r -D -x foo bar
Original tree
.
├── .foo_hidden_file.txt
├── foo.txt
├── foo
│ ├── foo.txt
│ └── foo
│ └── foo.txt
└── .foo_hidden_dir
└── foo.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── .bar_hidden_file.txt
├── bar.txt
├── bar
│ ├── bar.txt
│ └── bar
│ └── bar.txt
└── .bar_hidden_dir
└── bar.txt
Undo/redo operations using dump file
When you perform a renaming operation, rnr will create by default a dump file in the current directory you executed the command. This file can be used to easily revert the operations using from-file and -u option.
Rename operation
rnr -f foo bar ./*
Undo previous operation
rnr from-file -f -u rnr-[timestamp].json
If you want to redo the operation just pass the dump file without any additional argument:
rnr from-file -f rnr-[timestamp].json
Create backup files before renaming
rnr can create backup files before renaming for any operation passing -b option. The backup files names are ensured to be unique and won't be overwritten if another backup is created. If you are working with many large files, take into account that files will be duplicated.
rnr -f -b file renamed ./*
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── file-01.txt.bk
├── file-02.txt.bk
├── file-03.txt.bk
├── renamed-01.txt
├── renamed-02.txt
└── renamed-03.txt
Convert UTF-8 file names to ASCII
rnrcan convert UTF-8 file names to their ASCII representation. This feature uses AnyAscii library to perform the transliteration.
You can run:
rnr to-ascii ./*
Or:
rnr to-ascii -r .
Original tree
.
├── fïlé-01.txt
├── FïĹÊ-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── FILE-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Advanced regex examples
More info about regex used in the regex package.
Replace extensions
rnr -f '\..*$' '.txt' ./*
Original tree
.
├── file-01.ext1
├── file-02.ext2
└── file-03.ext3
Renamed tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Replace numbers
rnr -f '\d' '1' ./*
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── file-11.txt
├── file-12.txt
└── file-13.txt
Capture groups
- Capture three unnamed groups [
name(1)-number(2).extension(3)]. - Swap group 1 (name) and group 2 (number).
rnr -f '(\w+)-(\d+).(\w+)' '${2}-${1}.${3}' ./*
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── 01-file.txt
├── 02-file.txt
└── 03-file.txt
Capture several named groups and swap them
- Capture two digits as
number. - Capture extension as
ext. - Swap groups.
rnr -f '(?P
\d{2})\.(?P
\w{3})
'
'${ext}.${number}' ./*
Original tree
.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt
Renamed tree
.
├── file-txt.01
├── file-txt.02
└── file-txt.03
![[Feature request] Highlight replacements in dry-run mode.](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/7361274?v=4)
![[Feature request] Add file names enumeration (counter) option](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/17669188?v=4)
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