rename

A small Python script for renaming files and directories using regular expressions.

I've made this script mostly for my personal usage as I was lacking a tool for quickly renaming lot of files using regular expressions on my personal server. If you are in the same situation feel free to use it as well.

Installation

As I'm not releasing this script on Pypi, the easiest way to install it is through pipx or uv using this git repository directly.

Don't forget to ensure that your pipx or uv installed programs are on your PATH

pipx

pipx install git+https://github.com/g0di/rename

uv

uv tool install git+https://github.com/g0di/rename

Usage

You can get all the script documentation by simply running rename --help with some examples.

usage: rename [-h] [--dry-run] [-v] sources [sources ...] old new

Rename one or several files or directories with all occurences of substring 'old' replaced by 'new'

positional arguments:
  sources        One or many paths to files or directories to rename
  old            Substring to replace. It can be a Python regular expression with capture groups
  new            Substring replacement. You can use capture groups (e.g: \1, \2, ...)

options:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose  Cause rename to be verbose, showing files as they are renamed
  --dry-run      Display new names intead of actually renaming sources

    Note: Prefer wrapping regular expressions in single quotes to avoid interpretation of the shell

    Examples:

    Replace a simple text on a file
        $ rename --verbose my-file.txt file note
        my-file.txt -> my-note.txt

    Replace a simple text on many files
        $ rename --verbose my-file-1.txt my-file-2.txt file note
        my-file-1.txt -> my-note-1.txt
        my-file-2.txt -> my-note-2.txt

    Replace using a regular expression
        $ rename --verbose 1-my-file-1.txt '\d' X
        my-file-1.txt -> X-my-file-X.txt

    Replace using a regular expression and capture groups
        $ rename --verbose my-file-1.txt '(.*)-(.)\.txt' '\2-\1.txt'
        my-file-1.txt -> 1-my-file.txt