Vrftjkry

How can I add numbers to the files in one directory?

In one directory I have files like below:

fileA

fileB

fileC

fileD

I want to prepend ascending numbers to them, like this:

1_fileA

2_fileB

3_fileC

4_fileD

Thank you in advance.

One of the solutions:

cd <your dir> then run in bash (copy and paste in command-line):

n=1; for f in *; do mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"; done

Bash script case:

#!/bin/bash

n=1

for f in *

do

  if [ "$f" = "rename.sh" ]

  then

    continue

  fi

  mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"

done

save it as rename.sh to dir with files to rename, chmod +x rename.sh then run it ./rename.sh

If there are more than 9 files, I would use printf to pad the number to get the expected sort order, like this

n=0

for f in *

    do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f"

    echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"

done

Remove echo when you see the correct result.

Explanation

In this line, do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f" we create a format for the new filenames and put it into the variable new.

%2d is a 2 digit decimal number. Instead of 2d, you can use 3d etc to get another leading 0 (if you have more than 99 files).

((++n)) increments the variable n (which we set to 0 at the start of the script). Since it is iterated once each time the loop is run, files get incremented name prefixes.

-v makes mv print what will be changed.

-- in the mv statement is to prevent filenames that start with - being interpreted as options.

That’s a job for rename:

rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) {$i++}; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *

This defines a variable, increases it if it’s not set (else it would start with 0 instead of 1) and replaces the beginning of the filename with the number increasing it every time. You can change the format easily, e.g. to make it three-digit (001, 002, …) use "%03d_". Running it with -n only prints the changes, to actually perform the renaming remove this flag.

Example run

$ ls -1

fileA

fileB

fileC

fileD

$ rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) {$i++}; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *

rename(fileA, 1_fileA)

rename(fileB, 2_fileB)

rename(fileC, 3_fileC)

rename(fileD, 4_fileD)

$ rename 'our $i; if (!$i) {$i++}; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *

$ ls -1

1_fileA

2_fileB

3_fileC

4_fileD

1. Open your directory in Nautilus.




2. Highlight all of the files.




3. Right-click, and select "Rename..." from the context menu.




4. On the Rename dialog, click the +Add button.




5. Select "1,2,3,4" under "Automatic Numbers"



6. 
   

   Then, in the Rename dialog, in the text entry field, insert an
   underscore "_" character between "[1, 2, 3]" and "[Original file name]".

   
   
   

   It should look like "[1, 2, 3]_[Original file name]"

   
   



7. Click the Rename button.

One option is

cd /path/to/folder/

ls -1v | rename -n -v 's/^/sprintf("%02d_", ++our$i)/e'

• This works fine, except with the file names with new line "n". Switch '-1v'takes care of spaces and tabs,




• Other commands posted here change the order of files with numbers e.g. 10a comes before 1a.




• Whichever suits in a situation.

I had some time to test all these commands. Here are the results.

$ ls

001abc.txt  '10a bc.txt'   1abc.txt  '2ab c.txt'  'a'$'t''bc.txt'



$ ls -1v | rename -n -v 's/^/sprintf("%02d_", ++our$i)/e'

Reading filenames from file handle (GLOB(0x55cb57991b28))

rename(001abc.txt, 01_001abc.txt)

rename(1abc.txt, 02_1abc.txt)

rename(2ab c.txt, 03_2ab c.txt)

rename(10a bc.txt, 04_10a bc.txt)

rename(a    bc.txt, 05_a    bc.txt)



$ n=1; for f in *; do echo mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"; done

mv 001abc.txt 1_001abc.txt

mv 10a bc.txt 2_10a bc.txt

mv 1abc.txt 3_1abc.txt

mv 2ab c.txt 4_2ab c.txt

mv a    bc.txt 5_a  bc.txt



$ for f in *;     do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f";     echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"; done

mv -v -- 001abc.txt  09_001abc.txt

mv -v -- 10a bc.txt  010_10a bc.txt

mv -v -- 1abc.txt  011_1abc.txt

mv -v -- 2ab c.txt  012_2ab c.txt

mv -v -- a  bc.txt  013_a   bc.txt



$ ./rename.sh 

mv 001abc.txt 1_001abc.txt

mv 10a bc.txt 2_10a bc.txt

mv 1abc.txt 3_1abc.txt

mv 2ab c.txt 4_2ab c.txt

mv a    bc.txt 5_a  bc.txt



$ rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) {$i++}; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *

rename(001abc.txt, 1_001abc.txt)

rename(10a bc.txt, 2_10a bc.txt)

rename(1abc.txt, 3_1abc.txt)

rename(2ab c.txt, 4_2ab c.txt)

rename(a    bc.txt, 5_a bc.txt)

rename(rename.sh, 6_rename.sh)



$ for f in *;     do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f";     echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"; done

mv -v -- 001abc.txt  01_001abc.txt

mv -v -- 10a bc.txt  02_10a bc.txt

mv -v -- 1abc.txt  03_1abc.txt

mv -v -- 2ab c.txt  04_2ab c.txt

mv -v -- a  bc.txt  05_a    bc.txt

mv -v -- rename.sh  06_rename.sh

pyrenamer is also a dead easy solution