Renaming multiple files (changing extension)

Question

I would like to change file extension from *.txt file to *.text file, tried using the basename command, but I am having trouble on changing more than 1 file, I am getting a basename: too many arguments Try basename --help' for more information error.

Any suggestion?

Here's my code:

files=`ls -1 *.txt`

for x in $files
do
mv $x "`basename $files .txt`.text"
done

Answer 1

Straight from Greg's Wiki:

# Rename all *.txt to *.text
for f in *.txt; do 
mv -- "$f" "${f%.txt}.text"
done

Also see the entry on why you shouldn't parse ls.

Edit: if you have to use basename your syntax would be:

for f in *.txt; do
mv "$f" "$(basename "$f" .txt).text"
done

Answer 2

Based on the @Prince John Wesley answer, here is a simple bash script for changing all extensions of files in the current directory from ext1 to ext2. Also outputs names of the files being renamed.

#!/bin/bash
for f in *.$1
do
    [ -f "$f" ] && mv -v "$f" "${f%$1}$2"
done

Example usage (assuming the name of the script is change-ext):

change-ext ext1 ext2

Answer 3

A simple command will do that for you, it replace every occurences of "txt" to "text" in all file matching "*.txt":

rename txt text *.txt

Answer 4

for f in *.txt
do
    [ -f "$f" ] && mv "$f" "${f%txt}text"
done