Vrftjkry

I have many files like xyz_123_foo.ext for which I would like to add -bar to the filenames at the end to result in xyz_123_foo-bar.ext. I tried:

rename . -bar. xyz_*

which resulted in:

rename: invalid option -- 'b'

followed by the usage text. I then tried variations with '-bar' and "-bar" to no avail.

How can I get rename to accept - as part of the replacement string?

Or would another command be more efficient or appropriate?

My shell is bash and I am using the rename from util-linux on SuSe Linux SLE12.

mmv is nice for tasks like this ex.

mmv -n -- '*.ext' '#1-bar.ext'

or for any dot extension

mmv -n -- '*.*' '#1-bar.#2'

Remove the -n once you are happy that it is doing the right thing.

Assuming that your rename is the Perl variant of the rename utility:

rename 's/$/-bak/' xyz_*

This uses a Perl expression that simply inserts -bak at the end of all given filenames through a substitution of $ (the "end of line" anchor).

You could also use

rename '$_ .= "-bak"' xyz_*

which uses another Perl expression that appends the string -bak to $_ (the "current thing" in Perl, here it's a filename).

For a shell loop solution:

for name in xyz_*; do

    mv -i "$name" "$name-bak"

done

Assuming we're talking about the PERL extension, rename (and not the rename from util-linux)...

rename 's/.ext/-bar.ext/' xyz_123_foo.ext

The result changes the file name to xyz_123_foo-bar.ext.

The portion within single quotes is a PERL regular expression. The s substitutes .ext in the file name with -bar.ext. One might combine this with find, assuming these files are in your home directory (~).

find ~ -type f -name '*.ext' -exec rename 's/.ext/-bar.ext/' {} +