I'm excited to share f2, a command-line tool I built for fast and flexible bulk renaming of files. It's cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows), executes a dry-run by default, supports undo, and provides great flexibility in file renaming with several built-in variables and Exiftool integration.
I hope you find it useful!
Here's some great product and UX chops, not just coding chops.
(Though for those of us who cut their teeth on tools like Norton Commander on the original IBM PC, the association would be with F6.)
It only happens a few times a year that I need to batch rename. Buy when I do my adrenaline levels go up by about two espressos.
-A - Sample of the of the ACTUAL file name
-B - Sample of the desired filename
f2 -A 001.pdf -B 001_renamed.pdf
001.pdf => 001_renamed.pdf
002.pdf => 002_renamed.pdf
...
Most important: Worked locally and did not send the filenames to chatGPT ;)
f2 -f '(\d+).pdf' -r '{$1}_renamed.pdf'
The advantage of using a sample instead of a regex is, that you don't need to think about it. I have "this.pdf" and I want "that.pdf" is way easier than developing a regex that matches the parts I need replacing it with what I want.
The tool I mentioned afaik used machine learning to determine a valid regex from a given sample automagically somehow (see [1]), which was then applied to the files it found, followed by a preview and a choice to either perform or abort. You could also provide more examples, if it did not succeed determining the regex in the first place to be more specific:
f2 -A 001.pdf -B 001_renamed.pdf -A 002.pdf -B 002_renamed.pdf
I should have saved it somewhere to re-implement it myself. The only things I remember are, that it was dotnet based, using the dotnet machine learning libs and it was a command line tool. Maybe it was called `ab` because you could provide the parameter -A sample -B destination, but I did not find anything on github.
If I ever find it again, I'll let you know in a github issue.
1: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/616292/is-it-possible-fo...
Another approach I recently discovered is an old but beautiful Unix-style tool for renaming files: vidir - edit a directory in your text editor. It’s part of the moreutils suite [1].
You get the list of filenames in your editor – edit them as you like, save, exit, and it renames the files. It uses whatever editor is set in your $EDITOR env var, so it doesn’t have to be vi/vim.
You can also pipe in a list of files, e.g. `find . -type f | vidir -`, to edit just the files you want - and you can even change paths (add, rename, remove directories) in the editor to move files around easily.
To try it quickly on macOS: `brew install moreutils`
I'm not sure how "powerful" vidir is, but I recently found this functionality in yazi [1] and it became one of those "you think you don't need it until you try it" features
[0]: http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/rename_file_pattern.html
Honestly I don't see myself remembering and using the variables features(which gives the exiftool feature others here are raving about) but it's already insanely good without that. Love the ability to refine your selection with further -f flags. Also the ability to rename while create nested paths is so good.
Suggestion, having an "up"[1] mode where you can see the dry run output in a live updating thing when you are adding further -fs and -rs.
abc_abc.txt | 123_abc.txt
abc_abc.txt | abc_123.txt
A small idea for an alternative, more flexible option: "--replace-range", where you could use a well established syntax to represent ranges such as the one from Python and Go slices, so it's not only possible to replace from the leftmost or rightmost but also in-between.
[1]: https://f2.freshman.tech/guide/tutorial#limiting-the-number-...
simonw•1mo ago
The EXIF stuff to create folders based on the date photos were taken is fantastic! https://f2.freshman.tech/guide/organizing-image-library
This tool solves a problem that I face all the time, I am definitely going to be using this often.
ayoisaiah•1mo ago