18.12 Renaming a List of Files Interactively

Article 18.9 shows how to rename a set of files, like changing *.new to *.old . Here's a different way, done from inside vi . This gives you a chance to review and edit the commands before you run them. Here are the steps:

&
 

$
 

% 

vi   


Start vi without a filename



:r !ls *.new   


Read in the list of files, one filename per line



:%s/.*/mv & &/ 


Make mv command lines



:%s/new$/old/   


Change second filenames; ready to review



:w !sh   


Run commands by writing them to a shell



:q!   


Quit vi without saving

If you've made an alias ( 10.2 ) for ls that changes its output format, that can cause trouble here. If your alias gives more than a plain list of filenames in a column, use !/bin/ls instead of just !ls .