Unable to install Linux's rename to Mac

Question

I read the tutorial which advises me to run at util-linux package

./configure

I get

configuring util-linux-2.12q

You don't have <scsi/scsi.h>
You don't have <linux/blkpg.h>
You don't have <linux/kd.h>
You have <locale.h>You have <langinfo.h>
You have <sys/user.h>
You have <uuid/uuid.h>
You have <rpcsvc/nfs_prot.h>
You don't have <asm/types.h>
You don't have <linux/raw.h>
You have <stdint.h>
You don't have <sys/io.h>
You have inet_aton()
You have fsync()
You have getdomainname()
You have nanosleep()
You don't have personality()
You don't have updwtmp()
You have fseeko()
You have lchown()
You don't have rpmatch()
You have <term.h>
You have ncurses. Using <ncurses.h>.
You have termcap
You don't need -lcrypt
Strange... Static compilation fails here.
You don't have native language support
You have __progname
You don't have <pty.h> and openpty()
You have wide character support
You don't have SYS_pivot_root
You have a tm_gmtoff field in struct tm
Your rpcgen output does not compile - using pregenerated code
You have zlib
You don't have blkid

It then advises me to run the following command at misc-utils

make rename 

I get the following warning

cc -pipe -O2 -mtune=i386 -fomit-frame-pointer -I../lib -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes -DNCH=1   -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -DSBINDIR=\"/sbin\" -DUSRSBINDIR=\"/usr/sbin\" -DLOGDIR=\"/var/log\" -DVARPATH=\"/var\" -DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/share/locale\" -O2  -s  rename.c   -o rename
ld warning: option -s is obsolete and being ignored

How can you install rename -command for Mac?

Answer 1

Do compile rename from linux. There are some minor differences to the indications in the tutorial. I used version 2.22 from the file util-linux-2.22.tar.gz

Download it and uncompress it. Go to the uncompressed folder in a terminal.

Don't just run ./configure, use this command with flags instead:

./configure --disable-su --disable-sulogin --disable-login

then from that very same folder, NOT changing into misc-utils, you do make rename

That's all, in the current folder you'll have the executable and in the misc-utils the man documentation if you need it.

Answer 2

Try this:

function rename { from=$1; to=$2; shift 2; for i in "$@"; do j=`echo $i | sed "s/$from/$to/"`; mv "$i" "$j"; done }

Paste it into your .profile or .bashrc and run it just like the Red Hat rename utility:

$rename foo bar *.txt

Turns foo1.txt, foo2.txt and foofoo.txt into bar1.txt, bar2.txt but, somewhat irritatingly, barfoo.txt.
Maybe someone can tweak it to fix this.

Test it by putting 'echo' before 'mv' so that it outputs a list of all changes it will make without making them.

Answer 3

That's a warning, not an error.

I've just tried this myself and it has built a rename executable.

Answer 4

Easily install rename using Homebrew

brew install rename

Answer 5

Can you not just use mv instead of trying to compile rename? Maybe even alias it to rename?

(EDIT: Ignore my comment about build-essentials - as pointed out by yangyang, it looks like it should have built ok anyhow)