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by cutler 3205 days ago
CentOS 7 specifies `man rename` : rename [options] expression replacement file...

The rename example fails with "rename: not enough arguments".
3 comments
jwilk 3205 days ago
Unfortunately, there are two incompatible rename programs in the wild. :(

Debian ships this: https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/File-Rename/rename.PL

Most(?) other distros ship the one from util-linux: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/rename.1.html

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loudmax 3205 days ago
Don't read it like this: rename <expression> <replacement file> ...

Read it like this: rename <expression> <replacement> <file(s)...>

Argument 1 is a string (not a regex), argument 2 is string to replace the old string, and arguments 3+ is a file, or list of files, or a glob.

The man page includes a warning about the lack of safeguards. It is unfortunate that rename doesn't have an equivalent of mv or cp's -i flag because it's so easy to overwrite files if your expressions aren't exactly correct.

On some Ubuntu systems, I've seen another version of rename that's actually a Perl script that uses regular expressions. I think that version lets you set some safeguards, which are sorely lacking in the binary version of rename that ships with CentOS.

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wyoh 3204 days ago
It's available in Fedora under the name "prename". I've asked the maintener to make it available for EPEL 7, will this work for you?
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