Batch Renamers

Bren – bulk file renaming program for the shell

Bren is a program for renaming multiple files at once. Bren is versatile and offers support for post-rename scripting with Guile, but you do not need to use it, in order to rename files.

Bren runs on the command line. It’s simple and fast.

Simple example to use Bren:
$ bren -p "/path/to/a/directory/with/files" -b "myphoto"

This renames every file in given path using the basename. For example, if your directory has files img34324.jpg, img345435.jpg and img7667.jpg they would be renamed to myphoto(1).jpg, myphoto(2).jpg and myphoto(3).jpg.

Other examples:

Do not traverse into subdirectories and remove any file extensions:
$ bren -p /some/path/to/dir -b "basename" -t -e

Generate random, 8 characters long identifier:
$ bren -p /some/path/to/dir -b "basename" -r

Dry run:
$ bren -p /some/path/to/dir -b "basename" -r -D

After the rename operation, execute a GNU Guile script:
$ bren -p /some/path/to/dir -b "basename" -c /path/to/script.scm

Guile scripts must contain function (bren-bridge(filepath)). Bren looks for that and calls it after every file rename operation. Argument filepath is the path of the file that was renamed.

This is free and open source software.

Options:

-p Set path where to look for files
-b Set basename for the files
-c After renaming, execute a script pointed by the path, for each file
-e Remove extension from the files
-r Generate random, 8 characters long identifier
-t Do not traverse into subdirectories of the path
-d Use last modified date of the file as an identifier
-D Dry run. Run, but do not actually rename any files
-h Show short help and exit
-V Show version number of the program

Website: www.byteptr.com/bren
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Niko Rosvall
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Bren is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Return to Console Batch Renamers


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