Batch rename ?

acidtuch10 · #1 November 8th, 2003, 06:22 PM

Question on how to do a rename ( .zip to .mp3) in a directory with multiple files? ..... I have done this using a PC .... but now I don't have access to a PC and I am only using my Mac ~ 10.3~ , But am unsure on how to do a batch rename ... Like ... whatever.zip I would like to equal whatever.mp3

Anyhelp would be great

Thanks

Dave

dave17lax · #2 November 8th, 2003, 06:41 PM

I may be out of my league here, but aren't these two different formats entirely? I don't think just renaming would do anything. If you have a hundred zip files that contain mp3's, drag them all to stuffit expander and they will all unzip and create mp3's. If that is what was compressed in the first place.

acidtuch10 · #3 November 8th, 2003, 07:21 PM

lets say that I renamed them *.zip for what ever reason.....maybe to anybody searching *.mp3 extension. now that they are on a cd and I have to rename whatever.zip to whatever .mp3 to play them ... hense the batch rename ..... So how do i take multipe files named whatever.zip and change every extension to .mp3 instead of .zip?

Thanks

Sogni · #4 November 8th, 2003, 10:53 PM

Open terminal, find the directory, and type:
mv *.zip *.mp3

If you've never used Terminal, simply open it (from Applications/Utilities), type:
cd
and drag the folder with the files over to the Terminal, the directory will appear in terminal. Hit enter.

then do the above mv command.

HTH

davidbrit2 · #5 November 9th, 2003, 12:02 AM

Hmm, that doesn't seem to be a supported usage of mv. Doing this under tcsh can have disastrous results, too. You can get the proper results with this (slightly longer) command. First, launch the bash shell in the Terminal so this works right. Just open Terminal, and enter "bash". Then you use cd followed by the full path of the directory containing the files to rename. You can do this step with drag and drop, as Sogni suggested. It should all look something like this:

Code:

bash
cd <directory>
for file in *.zip; do mv $file `echo $file | sed "s/zip/mp3/"`; done

Any file in the current directory with an extension of .zip will now have an extension of .mp3 when you do this.

Sogni · #6 November 9th, 2003, 02:22 AM

Wha? Wow you're right... I swear I've done something similar before (on Linux).

davidbrit2 · #7 November 9th, 2003, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sogni

Wha? Wow you're right... I swear I've done something similar before (on Linux).

I think you might be right, because that looks awfully familiar to me too...

mindbend · #8 November 9th, 2003, 06:49 PM

For those of us not comfortable using the Terminal, I recommend "A Better Finder Rename" for batch renaming. See versiontracker.com and do a search.

I use it all the time, so I find the price well worth it. What's nice is that you can select a bunch of files and right-click to access the rename utility. Nice.

It supports any sort of renaming processing you could imagine. Extensions, file name start/end of files, sequencing by number/alpha, etc.