.\" Written by Andries E. Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\" Placed in the public domain
.\"
.TH RENAME "1" "June 2011" "util-linux" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
rename \- rename files
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B rename
[\fIoptions\fR] \fIexpression replacement file\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B rename
will rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence of
.I expression
in their name by
.IR replacement .
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
Give visual feedback which files where renamed, if any.
.TP
\fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR
Display version information and exit.
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Display help screen and exit.
.SH EXAMPLES
Given the files
.IR foo1 ", ..., " foo9 ", " foo10 ", ..., " foo278 ,
the commands
.RS
.PP
.nf
rename foo foo0 foo?
rename foo foo0 foo??
.fi
.PP
.RE
will turn them into
.IR foo001 ", ..., " foo009 ", " foo010 ", ..., " foo278 .
And
.RS
.PP
.nf
rename .htm .html *.htm
.fi
.PP
.RE
will fix the extension of your html files.
.SH WARNING
The rename has no safeguards. If user has permission to rewrite file names
the command will perform the action without any questions. For example
result can be quite drastic when the command is ran as root in /lib
directory. Make always a backup before running the command, unless you truly
know what you are doing.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mmv (1),
.BR mv (1)
.SH AVAILABILITY
The rename command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.