# pipe-rename [![Crates.io](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/pipe-rename)](https://crates.io/crates/pipe-rename) `pipe-rename` takes a list of files as input, opens your `$EDITOR` of choice, then renames those files accordingly. ![](renamer.gif) ## Installation `cargo install pipe-rename` This will install the `renamer` binary. ## Usage Usage is simple, just pipe a list of files into `renamer`. This will open your `$EDITOR` (or vim, if not set or passed with `--editor`), and once your editor exits it will detect which files were renamed: ```bash ls | renamer ``` You can also supply filenames as positional arguments. To rename `.txt` files in the current directory: ```bash renamer *.txt ``` The default behavior is to rename files, but you can override this. If you want to run `git mv old new` on each rename, you can do something like this: ```bash ls | renamer --rename-command "git mv" ``` ## Helptext ``` Takes a list of files and renames/moves them by piping them through an external editor USAGE: renamer [OPTIONS] [FILES]... ARGS: ... OPTIONS: -c, --rename-command Optionally set a custom rename command, like 'git mv' -e, --editor Optionally set an editor, overriding EDITOR environment variable and default -f, --force Overwrite existing files -h, --help Print help information -n, --filenames-only Only rename filenames -p, --pretty-diff Prettify diffs -u, --undo Undo the previous renaming operation -V, --version Print version information -y, --yes Answer all prompts with yes ``` ### Caveat emptor **NB:** it makes sense to be aware of the issues `ls` can cause in this context, depending on the `ls` flavor (or substitute, such as `lsd`, `exa` ...) used. Please read [this document](https://web.archive.org/web/20230102124738/http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs) for more information. While your shell will pass the file names individually, no matter if they contain whitespace, an `ls` that fails to detect the pipe and print one file name per line will cause issues. Unfortunately `ls -Q` also isn't a solution here, because unlike the shell -- which will strip quotes prior to passing them to invoked commands -- `renamer` won't handle the quoted names and will probably complain about non-existent files, too. ### Advanced usage If you have tools like GNU `find` at your disposal, you can also use the following method: ```bash find -type f -exec renamer {} + ``` This would execute `renamer` with all of the files matched by `find`. You can use additional `find` predicates such as `-name` or `-ipath` to limit which files to rename. There is, however, one caveat: on large lists of files you may encounter multiple invocations of `renamer` -- and thus your editor -- due to how `find ... -exec {} +` works. It will pass as many file names on the command line as it can fit but it is limited by `ARG_MAX` (see `getconf ARG_MAX` output for how long the overall command line length can be on your system). Other `find` flavors would allow the following, but it would invoke `renamer` -- and thus your editor -- *once for every single found file*: ```bash find -type f -exec renamer {} \; ``` In order to sidestep this issue, you can employ `xargs` in conjunction with `find` like so (`-print` is implied for `find`): ``` find -type f | xargs renamer --editor vim ``` The part past `xargs` is the invocation of `renamer` without the file names. It exists just to demonstrate how you would pass arguments to `renamer` using this method. If your files contain wonky characters you could also try: ``` find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 renamer --editor vim ``` Alas, this could be asking for trouble. If your file names contain line breaks, for example, this could confuse `renamer` which expects a single file name per line when re-reading the edited file. ## Contributors ✨

_{Marcus Buffett}
🤔 💻

_{Robin Krahl}
🤔 💻 🐛

_{Max Timkovich}
🤔 💻

_{Benoit de Chezelles}
🤔

_{Oliver Schneider}
🤔 💻

This project follows the [all-contributors](https://github.com/all-contributors/all-contributors) specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!