Re: The rename command…

Wed Aug 27 22:21:58 UTC 2008

2008/8/27 Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com>

> Rashkae wrote:
> > Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> >
> >
> >> When looking around on the web, I've seen a few sites where they mention
> the
> >> "other" rename, but no one seems to use it very much. One person even
> >> mentioned it as "pretty useless" or something like thatâ€¦
> >>
> >>
> >
> > It's certainly less powerful than prename.  All it does is simple string
> > substitution with no regex wildcards.  (However, I should point out,
> > this 'pretty useless' is exactly what you're doing here)
> >
> >
>     This forever repeated Re:The rename Command... is a Summer waste
> time email. From the very beginning of Linux the Windows users had to
> learn that rename is not part of the commands. We used "mv" and it has
> worked for all this time. It still does.

If you refer to me, I'm sorry to waste your summer. I only ask questions
because I want to learn.
When first starting to use computers, if we do not count the very first
years with a Swedish computer (Luxor ABC80) with a Basic interpreter and the
operating system CP/M, I was actually learning the operating system Primos
on a Prime 750, I think, at the university in the second half of the
eighties. The terminals were PT200. After they threw that out (except the
terminals), they got a Unix machine, and that is what I consider my first
real computer experience. That was a long time ago and after only a few
years I started to use Windows, just because wherever I was there was
Windows. After a while I got my own PC in 1999. OS? Windows 98. Some friends
also gave me a few pirate CDs with Windows 2000 and XP, yes, even ME. I
tried those, but after a while I thought I'd better stop doing those pirate
things, so I went back to Windows 98, which came with my PC. When I bought
my laptop at the end of 2006, Windows XP was preinstalled, but in summer
2007 I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it, after schrinking the Windows partition
to about 15 GB. I only wanted XP for two reasons: I paid for it and "just in
case I will need it some time". So far I started up Windows maybe 5 times or
so, and it annoyed me every time.
Anyway, I used mv since about 1988 and I am not sure I ever used rename in
DOS. Maybe a few times.
This question was, however, more a question about regular expression and
piping and things like that. The thing I wanted to do was to rename a lot of
links, making the annoying "Link to " thing disappear. I searched the link
using keywords like "rename" etc, not to look for a command with that name,
only because I thought that word should be mentioned in a text describing
how to batch rename files. I accidently found that rename command, which I
had no idea about before that. I read a little about it, but it seemed like
there was no -r or --recursive option, so I asked here for a better command
or set of commands for piping or whatever, maybe even a script. I think I
was quite open minded about the whole thing, even if that doesn't seem clear
when reading my first post in this thread.
Now I got a few replies which I am very happy with. I now have a few
solutions for my task and I even timed them to see which one is the fastest,
and I even gave my results here, just in case someone would be interested to
know, even if I doubt it.
So now I can get my job done and I learned a lot at the same time, which I
feel is a really great bonus. If I wonder the same thing again, I can just
search for this thread and refresh my memory.
Thanks to all who contributed with suggestions, ideas, information and
opinions.
So Karl, I think that you won't see much of this subject in the nearest
future, and I'm sorry for thinking that rename was a Linux standard command.
Well, actually I didn't, but well... my English is not very good and so on,
and I guess I couldn't find a better word at that time. Actually I still can
not... especially not when I also want to keep subjects short.

>
>
>    It is interesting that now you seldom see a message of someone who
> can't load Hardy and needs help. It appears everyone has it loaded now.
> Now it's people trying to get Hardy to do something unusual.

What's unusual about renaming files (links in this case)? If you are not
happy with a name, you will probably change it, right? In this case I am not
happy with that Nautilus adds two very unnecessary words to a link when it's
created, so I have to change them back again… And changing the source code
of Nautilus seems still a bit too much for a newbie like me.

>
>
>    For me I am very happy with Hardy as it was made to operate. I don't
> need to operate Windows because I hate windows! My Wife hates Windows
> and threatens to buy a MAC.

I don't know if my wife hates Windows, but I made her switch to Ubuntu. I
found that she only use Gimp, Firefox and OpenOffice.org anyway, and she
always complained about how slow Gimp was when processing big images.
Unfortunately her laptop broke (hardware failure) so we got a desktop
machine for her, which we bought with Ubuntu 7.10 pre installed. Recently we
bought an Eee PC with Xandros, so we now have 3 working computers, all with
GNU/Linux, so we never use Windows at all here. My wife compains now and
then, but not that we don't have Windows, it's more like when Firefox or
Opera crash and things like that. That happened in Windows too, I think I'd
blame the sites she visits and that she has like 30 tabs opened at the same
time, all the time, in Opera. I always tell her to close some of the
unnecessary tabs and save them as a session instead, making it easy to bring
them all up again when she need to, but no, all tabs at the same time is her
way, as it seems.
She never did that before she had Opera, maybe because it was just not
possible with the old Firefox 1.5 or even 2.0, without having all memory
eaten up, kind of.

> I Googled MAC and the new ones appear to be
> Linux with just a few odd kinks. They make their own BIOS which is
> pretty terrible :-)

I have actually thought of buying a Mac, but that was before I installed
Ubuntu the first time. I just love the Compiz-Fusion too, which is very
strange, because when I had Windows I always hated all that visual stuff and
turned it off. Yes, most of the Compiz stuff are turned off here right now
too, but some of them are actually helping as much as they look good, so I
keep a few features running.

>
>
>    I am going to get someone to recommend trying Linux. Then explain it
> is just like a MAC and see how that flies.
>
> Karl
>
>
> --
>
>        Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
>        Linux User
>        #450462   http://counter.li.org.
>   PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7
>
>
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