When one needs to change the same pattern in the names of both directories and files, things must be done in sequence, directory names first and filenames in second. I found this very good “Programatically rename files (or do other stuff to them) in R” post, I tried to follow it but it did not work…Īfter a bit of frustration, I realized that as I was trying to rename both the files and the directories at the same time, and I got the angry 'No such file or directory'. I decided to use the file.rename() function in R to deal with the problem.
![rename directory rename directory](https://www.howtoanswer.com/articles/windows/Rename_multiple_files_and_folders_at_once_in_Windows/sshot-3.png)
The directory tree also contained years in the same “99-00” format just like below:.The two digit system has thus become obsolete… So I decided to change everything back to four digits for years. I have recently worked with daily rainfall data from Oxford, U.K., dating back from 1828. I thus kept in the filenames, e.g., “99-00” to show that the data contained were obtained between and Aug 31, 2000. Until now, I had found very practical to keep the data in hydrological years, which for the Northern hemisphere and in temperate climates starts around the first of september and ends late August the next year. Though there is a rename command-line utility that is specifically used for batch renaming files but it doesn't come preinstalled on most distributions.I keep a database of high frequency flow and concentration data, which my colleagues and I have used to calculate uncertainties on annual nutrient and material loads 1– 8. There is no 'rn' command in GNU coreutils. The rename operation is just a move operation and that is what we do. The only change which will occur is the rename operation on the directory name. This will not negatively affect any files that are inside the directory. $ ls -lĭrwxrwxr-x 2 team team 4096 Feb 16 15:34 old_dirĭrwxrwxr-x 2 team team 4096 Feb 16 15:34 new_nameĪs you can see, the directory has been renamed from 'old_dir' to 'new_name'. This means that we can also rename a directory in the same fashion. Even the directory is a special type of file that stores the index of files that are inside the folder. This means that if you don't change the directory of source and destination files, the only change will be in the filename.Įverything is a file in Linux. This is what a move operation is at its core - for a better or worse analogy. Assume that I want to rename 'old_file' file to 'new_file' file. If you were to split the working of mv command, it acts in the following fashion (but obviously, this is done more efficiently). When you rename an item, you erase the old item name and write a new name for it. Yes! That's the move command and while its original purpose was to move (or cut-paste) a file from one location to another, it can be used to rename a file and directory.Īll the files inside the directory remain as it is. In Linux, you can use the same command that you use for renaming files for renaming directories also: mv old_dir new_dir There is a rmdir command but it is for removing directories, not renaming them.
![rename directory rename directory](https://www.cyberciti.biz/media/new/faq/2011/05/howto-rename-files-in-linux.jpg)
Take renaming a directory in the Linux command line. When you are new to something, even the simplest of the tasks could be confusing.