How to rename multiple files by removing the extension?

Question

I have a number of tiff files named:

sw.001.tif
sw.002.tif
...

and I want to remove the .tif at the end of each of the files. How can I use the rename command to do this?

Bear in mind that NO linux or unix filesystem uses Windows or VMS-style "extensions" - it is only by convention that a suffix of the file name is ".tif" or ".c" or ".o" or ".so" or whatever.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-19 23:05:31Z

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Debian rename:

rename 's/\.tif$//' *.tif

Red Hat rename:

rename .tif '' *.tif

answered Mar 19 '12 at 23:05

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
11.4k11631

	I believe the "Debian" rename is by Larry Wall (comes with Perl?) and "Red Hat" one is from util-linux (rename.ul in Debian IIRC). – XTL Mar 20 '12 at 14:19
	@XTL: True. I just call them that because they're the "rename" programs found in Debian or Red Hat derivatives. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Mar 20 '12 at 14:39
	Thanks so much! I never realized that there were different versions of 'rename'. I assume there are other subtle differences between the commands in debian & redhat. I'll have to lookup some of their differences. – Paul Mar 20 '12 at 14:45

XTL · Answer 2 · 2012-03-20 07:44:28Z

up vote 2 down vote

For a non-rename, you might do:

$ for i in *.tif; do mv -i $i `basename $i .tif`; done

(-i to warn against replacing a file)

answered Mar 20 '12 at 7:44

XTL
28119

5

Safer faster version: for i in ./*.tif; do mv -i "$i" "${i%.tif}"; done – jw013 Mar 20 '12 at 14:13

2 Answers