Globally Renaming Files in a Directory

Are the files to manipulate without file extension altogether?

They will always have the same extension. An example would be track01.wav, track02.wav, track03.wav, etc. In a simple case I just like to rename them to 01-track01.wav, 01-track02.wav,... In another case I may want to change the names to trk01.wav, trk02.wav, trk03.wav, etc.

I know how to do the work the long, non-global way instead of using just one single command.

Thanks.

Julianloui.

Run:

gedit renamescript; chmod +x renamescript

add the below code

#!/bin/bash

for i in `ls *.wav`; do

num=`echo $i | grep -o '[0-9]\{2\}'`
name="trck$num.wav"
echo "renaming $i to $name"
cp $i $name

done

If you put 'renamescript in the folder of files to work with it will work there, or you can put it in /usr/bin and you can run it anywhere you like (easier)

If you would ranther move than copy the files change cp to mv (I do it that way as it is less destructive and means you have to delete the old files once you are happy with the result.)

Thanks Thomas Krüger, that solved my question.

Thomas and Andrew,

Thanks very much for your helpful suggestions.

Julianvb