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 .