Renaming many files in Mac OS X, batch processing

Solution 1:

With Homebrew, a package manager for OS X:

brew install rename 

Then you can run the same rename commands as in Linux.

Solution 2:

Use the power of ZSH wisely (type zsh in the terminal if you are one of those poor souls who don't use it by default):

autoload zmv
zmv '(*).htm' '$1.html'

ZMV follows MMV syntax.

Solution 3:

Clumsy me:

for i in *.yourfiles; do mv "$i" "`echo $i | sed 's/old/new/g'`"; done 

And if you want to use it like I do often this way:

rename 's/old/new/' *.files

I recommend to use this litte script in ~/bin/rename:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh
SUBSEXPR=$1
shift
for i in $@; do mv $i `echo "$i" | sed $SUBSEXPR`; done

Solution 4:

You can try to install MacPorts and install the renameutils package:

renameutils @0.10.0 (sysutils)

renameutils is a set of programs designed to make renaming files faster and less cumbersome