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.
• Apply text transformations to the replacements including capture groups.
• 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.

Homebrew

You can use Homebrew package manager to install this tool in macOS or Linux systems.

brew install rnr

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

Check a detailed description of the application usage and all its options using: rnr help.

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 regex crate. 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-file subcommand.
• Number of replacements set to one.

Examples

• Rename a list of files
  • Include directories
  • Multiple replacements
  • Combination with other UNIX tools
• Recursive rename
  • Recursive rename with max directory depth
  • Recursive rename including directories and hidden files
• Undo/redo operations using dump file
• Create backup files before renaming
• Convert UTF-8 file names to ASCII
• Advanced regex examples
  • Replace extensions
  • Replace numbers
  • Capture groups
  • Capture several named groups and swap them
  • Capture several groups and apply a transformation

NOTE: If the regular expression EXPRESSION contains - as initial character, the application with parse it as an argument. You need to use -- after flags and before the arguments, for example rnr regex -f -- '-foo' '-bar' [...].

WINDOWS NOTE: In the examples that use *, you need to expand the wildcard in PowerShell, for example: rnr regex 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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -f file renamed

Read list of files from a file

cat file_list.txt | xargs rnr regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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 regex -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

1. Capture three unnamed groups [name(1)-number(2).extension(3)].
2. Swap group 1 (name) and group 2 (number).

rnr regex -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

SHELL NOTE: In shells like Bash and zsh, make sure to wrap the REPLACEMENT pattern in single quotes. Otherwise, capture group indices will be replaced by expanded shell variables.

Capture several named groups and swap them

1. Capture two digits as number.
2. Capture extension as ext.
3. Swap groups.

rnr regex -f '(?P<number>\d{2})\.(?P<ext>\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

Capture several groups and apply a transformation

1. Capture three unnamed groups [name(1)-number(2).extension(3)].
2. Swap group 1 (name) and group 2 (number).
3. Transform replacement to uppercase.

rnr regex -f -t upper '(\w+)-(\d+)' '${2}-${1}' ./*

Original tree

.
├── file-01.txt
├── file-02.txt
└── file-03.txt

Renamed tree

.
├── 01-FILE.txt
├── 02-FILE.txt
└── 03-FILE.txt