bash script to rename all files in a directory?

Question

i have bunch of files that needs to be renamed.

file1.txt needs to be renamed to file1_file1.txt
file2.avi needs to be renamed to file2_file2.avi

as you can see i need the _ folowed by the original file name.

there are lot of these files.

Answer 1

One should mention the mmv tool, which is especially made for this.

It's described here: http://tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/html/mass-rename.html

...along with alternatives.

Answer 2

I use prename (perl based), which is included in various linux distributions. It works with regular expressions, so to say change all img_x.jpg to IMAGE_x.jpg you'd do

prename 's/img_/IMAGE_/' img*jpg

You can use the -n flag to preview changes without making any actual changes.

prename man entry