Rename All Files In A Folder In Linux

Folders are used to store multiple files in Linux. We can rename files one by one or rename all files in a folder. Linux provides different commands and methods to rename all files in a folder. The for loop , find command or rename command can be used to rename all files in a folder.

Rename All Files Using for Loop

The Linux bash provides for loop in order to iterate over multiple items. We can iterate over all files in Linux folders and change files name at every step. In the following example, we list and read file names into the FILE and then use the mv command to rename.

$ for FILE in *; do mv $FILE New_$FILE; done

Rename All Files Using find Command

Another way to rename all files in a folder is by using the find command. The find command can find all files and then rename them with the mv command.

$ find . -type -f -name '*' -printf "echo mv '%h/%f' '%h/Unix_%f\n'" | bash

Rename All Files with rename Command

The rename command is created to rename multiple files. We can use it with the following syntax to rename all files in a folder. In the following example, we rename all files by prefixing their existing names with “New”.

$ rename 's/^/New_/' *