If you want to use regex on Redhat in renaming files – use: ren

Example: /usr/local/bin/ren ’s/ //g’ *.txt

This example will remove all the white spaces from the text files in a directory.

Thanks for the information about KRename, which definitely a very useful tool.
 

For those who have not used KRename, check-out some screenshots of Krename
 

@Iftikhar,

Thanks for the info. mmv looks similar to rename. Is there anything special that mmv does which rename cannot do? (or) Is it pretty much the same?

@Nardi,

Your for-loop is similar to the method-2. Thanks for showing your detailed examples on how you do the move.

@Nabin,

I'm not sure whether there is a single command that will do the swap. I hope someone else can throw some ideas on your question. One thing that came to my mind is -- Instead of doing multiple mv's probably you can create a alias called mvswap which can have the multiple mv commands.

 
@Flynets,

Replacing space in a filename with underscore or hypen in a common requirement. Thanks for sharing your great example to solve that problem.

There are lots of time when we require to swap files between two configuration files. Is there any single command which will swap two files instead of writing 3 commands like this: mv abc.txt tmp.txt; mv def.txt abc.txt; mv tmp.txt def.txt

f=foofoo.foo

#replace first
echo ${f/foo/bar} # -> barfoo.foo

#replace all occurences
echo ${f//foo/bar} # -> barbar.bar

#replace first match from the beginning
echo ${f#f*f} # -> oo.foo
#notice the ’star’ consumes only ‘oo’ here

#replace all (longest match of regexp) from the beginning
echo ${f##f*f} # -> oo
#here, there is ‘oofoo.’ hidden under the ’star’ in regex ‘f*f’

#extension replacement
echo ${f%foo}bar # -> foofoo.bar

#replace first from the end
echo ${f%oo*} # -> foofoo.f

#replace all (longest match of regexp) from the end
echo ${f%%oo*} # -> f

enjoy =)

But have you tried using the “mmv” command (multiple move). This utility is not part of linux standard command set (I don’t know why) but it’s really nice.

So you just need to install the utility

hassan@linux:~$ sudo apt-get install mmv

Then you can move multiple files very easily, here is an example.

==>I want to rename all files which have extension *.htm to *.html<==

hassan@linux:~$ mmv “*.htm ” “#1.html”

You can read more about it from the excellent tutorial here (http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/mmv-copy-append-link-move-multiple-files-under-linux-shell-bash-by-wildcard-patterns-p5/)