Bulk rename files with Vim

Tip 1642 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2009 · complexity basic · author Whiteinge · version 7.0

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You can use Vim to quickly rename many files at once. The steps are: create a list of files; change the list by constructing commands to rename each file; execute the commands. This is essentially an in-memory simplistic shell script.

Unix shell

Create list of files

Starting at a shell prompt, you can send a list of file names to the standard input of Vim by entering:

\ls | vim -

The backslash tells your shell to disregard any aliases for ls; we need plain output with no color. Vim will open, displaying a list of file names.

Change to list of shell commands

In Vim you now have one file name per line. We need to change each line to be a valid stand-alone shell command.

For example, to rename the files to lowercase:

:%s/.*/mv -i & \L&/g

To append .orig to each file name:

:%s/.*/mv -i & &.orig/g

To change all .JPEG extensions to .jpg:

:%s/.*/mv -i & &/g
:%s/.JPEG$/.jpg/g

To remove duplicate extensions:

:%s/.*/mv -i & &/g
:%s/.jpg.jpg$/.jpg/g

To substitute certain text in the filename:

:%s/.*/\="mv -i ".submatch(0)." ".substitute(submatch(0), "foo", "bar", "g")/g

\= is substitute command expression. See VimTip755 for more details.

Note: In case the file name contains space character, it should be surrounded with quotes.

You can use any Vim features here (macros are useful), as long as each line results in a valid shell command.

Execute the commands

:w !sh

The reason this works is Vim writes a file line-by-line. So if you started with a list of 100 file names, it will execute 100 mv commands. Sure there are utilities that may do this better, but Vim is always available and that's one less thing you have to remember.

An alternative method of executing the commands is:

:%!bash

This will pipe the whole buffer to the system command bash, thus executing all of the move commands. This will also replace the file with the command's output, which is useful for commands besides mv. You can also visually select a small subset of lines, and only execute those commands:

:'<,'>!bash

Again, this will replace the selected lines with the command's output which can be useful for some commands.

See also

• renamer.vim plugin to list and rename files

Comments

 TO DO 

• Probably should generalise by adding a section for Windows.