Problem with "rename" using regex (Linux)

Question

I have a backup script which is creating two files:

a) db_mywebsite_2018-01-10_00-25.sql.gz (150 MB)

b) mywebsite1_2018-01-10_00-01.tar.gz (2 GB)

I want to remove the date (XXXX-XX-XX_XX-XX) from file names. Because the backup is made daily, each file will have a different date in the name. For this, I'm using the following command:

rename -v -n 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.sql.gz

For testing, I have touched two files db_mywebsite_2018-01-10_00-25.sql.gz and mywebsite1_2018-01-10_00-01.tar.gz

Command:

rename -v -n 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.sql.gz

Output:

db_mywebsite_2018-01-10_00-25.sql.gz renamed as db_mywebsite.sql.gz

1. The problem is that despite the above message "db_mywebsite_2018-01-10_00-25.sql.gz renamed as db_mywebsite.sql.gz" when I check it via ls -l it looks like that file name hasn't been renamed.

2. Rename command (regex) is not working on file mywebsite1_2018-01-10_00-01.tar.gz.

Answer 1

1. For the perl version of rename, the option -n means no action: print names of files to be renamed, but don't rename. If you want the file to be renamed, don't use the -n option. Thus, instead of:

   rename -v -n 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.sql.gz
   

   Use:

   rename -v 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.sql.gz
   

2. Consider:

   rename -v -n 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.sql.gz
   

   The above command will only attempt to rename files ending in .sql.gz. It will not to rename mywebsite1_2018-01-10_00-01.tar.gz because that file ends with .tar.gz. To rename both files, try:

   rename -v -n 's/_\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}_\d{2}-\d{2}//' *.tar.gz *.sql.gz