Rename multiple files according using a names-list

Question

I'm trying to rename multiple numbered files according to a list of names.

Example:

1.pdf, 2.pdf, …, n.pdf

And a file called names.txt, with a value per line:

Fabio
Joao
n-name

So we will have

• 1.pdf → Fabio.pdf
• 2.pdf → Joao.pdf
• n.pdf → n-name.pdf

Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

If the files are really just "lineNumber.pdf", then this is very easy to do. In the shell:

c=0
while IFS= read -r name; do
    ((c++))
    echo mv -- $c.pdf "$name.pdf"
done < names.txt

Once you're sure that works as you want it, remove the echo from the mv command.

If you have very many files, you might want to consider doing it in Perl instead which will be much faster:

perl -lne 'rename("$..pdf","$_.pdf")' names.txt