Replacing counter in a filename for all files in a directory

Question

After importing several 1000 Files from a camera onto a hard drive I realized, that the counter, used in the process of renaming the file - does not start from 0. This leads to file structure like this:

My vacation 2018-05-03 2345.jpg
My vacation 2018-05-03 2346.jpg
My vacation 2018-05-04 2347.jpg

I would like to batch rename all those files in a wax, that the index starts with 0

My vacation 2018-05-03 0001.jpg
My vacation 2018-05-03 0002.jpg
My vacation 2018-05-04 0003.jpg

I went already through some topics dealing with batch renaming files and adding an counter/index (bash loop) or usig rename/prename but I was not able to get a working solution for my case.

Basically, I would like to match the part of the filename with the description and the date using the regular expression .*(\d\d\d\d\-\d\d\-\d\d){1} and add a suffix counter on the end.

Answer 1

With zsh:

$ autoload -Uz zmv
$ zmv -n '(* )(<->)(.jpg)' '$1${(l[4][0])$(($2 - 2344))}$3'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-03 2345.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-03 0001.jpg'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-03 2346.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-03 0002.jpg'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-04 2347.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-04 0003.jpg'

(then, remove the -n (dry-run) if happy).

For a more explicit matching that requires the date be there in the file name (XXXX-XX-XX)

zmv -n '(* [0-9](#c4)(-[0-9](#c2))(#c2) )(<->)(.jpg)' '$1${(l[4][0])$(($3 - 2344))}$4'

Or

zmv -n '(* <1970-2021>-<1-12>-<1-31> )(<->)(.jpg)' '$1${(l[4][0])$(($2 - 2344))}$3'

Those subtract 2344 to the number. Alternatively, you could just take them as they come in order and number them from 1 ignoring the value of the number that is already there. If you'd also want the number to restart at one each time the prefix before the date changes, you could do:

$ typeset -A n=()
$ zmv -n '((*) <1970-2021>-<1-12>-<1-31> )(<->)(.jpg)' '$1${(l[4][0])$((++n[\$2]))}$4'
mv -- 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0044.jpg' 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0001.jpg'
mv -- 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0045.jpg' 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0002.jpg'
mv -- 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0046.jpg' 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0003.jpg'
mv -- 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0047.jpg' 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0004.jpg'
mv -- 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0048.jpg' 'My other vacation 2021-01-05 0005.jpg'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-03 2345.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-03 0001.jpg'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-03 2346.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-03 0002.jpg'
mv -- 'My vacation 2018-05-04 2347.jpg' 'My vacation 2018-05-04 0003.jpg'

Answer 2

In the file names, we need to substitute a sequence of digits followed by dot — \d+. — by a 4-zero padded counter followed by dot — sprintf("%04d.", ++$c).

rename -n -- 'our $c; s/\d+\./sprintf("%04d.", ++$c)/e' *.jpg

For no zero padding, we don't need sprintf, but only to concatenate the counter and the dot. Since the concatenation operator is also a dot,

rename -n -- 'our $c; s/\d+\./++$c . "."/e' *.jpg

Notes

Remove the -n when convinced it works correctly.

In some distributions rename may be called perl-rename.

our $c; was introduced to solve the 'Global symbol "$c" requires explicit package name' error. In my system it is not necessary... ¯\(ツ)/¯

Answer 3

#!/usr/bin/env bash                                                                                                                     

#My vacation 2018-05-03 2345.jpg
#My vacation 2018-05-03 0002.jpg

cdir="${1}";
filename_start="${2}";

# For every file.
for cfilename in ${cdir}/*; do
    # If its index starts with a 0.
    if [[ "${cfilename}" =~ "${filename_start} "[0-9]*-[0-9]*-[0-9]*" "[0] ]]; then
        # Change its name.
        mv "${cfilename}" "${cfilename}_my_addition";
        fi
    done

Then you need to save this code as a file.
Give it .sh ending.

Give it permissions with:

chmod 700 rename_files.sh;

And then you can run it with:

./rename_files.sh;

Answer 4

Beside all the suggested answers I also found the batch-rename functionality of Double Commander very usefull and suitable for my needs.

Here is my setup:

• I add an counter to the filename [N][C]
• I use search and replace
  • Search: (\d{1,4})(\d{2,4})(\..{3,4}$)
  • Replace: $2$3
• You need to check both checkboxes Regular Expression and Use substitution

The instant preview is very helpful feature allowing fast tweaking and control of the resulting re-indexing of the files