Batch rename

[sunrat]

I admit I will never understand regular expressions. Just spent way too long at first in Double Commander Multi Rename Tool and then with rename utility on cli.
I have a directory of audio files downloaded from Youtoob with names like this:

'01 - All Of My Days [toWgmfI5FRA].opus'
'02 - Emily [XrTJ0NIcTDE].opus'
'03 - Ballad Of A Young Man (Official Music Video) [ZdM9ZEltjEs].opus'

I just want to batch remove the bits between square brackets plus the preceding space. More of a learning exercise now than a vital process but I can't let it defeat me!

[arzgi]

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 aptitude search rename
p   arename                         - automatic audio file renaming tool        
p   autorenamer                     - program to rename files to make them sort 
p   caja-rename                     - Batch renaming extension for Caja         
p   golang-github-google-renameio-d - provides a way to atomically create or rep
p   gprename                        - Complete batch renamer for Linux          
p   ifrename                        - Rename network interfaces based on various
p   krename                         - powerful batch renamer for KDE            
p   libdevel-caller-ignorenamespace - module for hiding namespaces from caller()
v   libfile-rename-perl             -                                           
p   mp3rename                       - Rename mp3 files based on id3tags         
p   mrename                         - tool for easy and automatic renaming of ma
p   node-gulp-rename                - gulp pulgin to rename files               
p   rename                          - Perl extension for renaming multiple files
p   rename-flac                     - CLI tool to rename FLAC files             
p   renameutils                     - Programs to make file renaming easier   

GUI versions offer the preview option, which is good if don't know regular expressions.

There are books of the regular expressions, if you want to study

[4D696B65]

gprename

[sunrat]

Thanks but I know how to search for programs. DC Multi Rename has previews and can use regular expressions but I referred to the guide a few times but couldn't work out the correct one. I ended up removing the last 14 characters in each filename rather than regex. DC was not working with [N1:-15] name mask although I'm sure it worked before so I eventually used rename:

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rename -n 's/.{14}(\.opus)/$1/' *

-n is for dry run of course.

Edit - Explanation for posterity

s/old/new/' replace oldwithnew`
(\.opus) save these characters...
.{14} the last 14 characters whatever they are
$1 the characters saved with ()

One day I'd love to work out how to do it with regex wildcards or similar but I fear I will die trying.

[sunrat]

gprename

Will check that one out.

Edit several minutes later - seems to work ok for removing a number of characters as I did in that rename command, but the regex still eludes me.

[arzgi]

There was also krename in the list.

[sunrat]

There was also krename in the list.

I had that already and tried it. Still couldn't work out the regex to remove the string "[xcharacters]"

DC has a comprehensive page on regex it uses - https://doublecmd.github.io/doc/en/regexp.html

[arzgi]

Odd, but I believe if you say so. I use xfce, and will not install kdelibs just to test.

[canci]

I know this might not be the right workflow, but since I use ranger, I'd just mark all songs and use its :bulkrename command.
This actually opens vim and all selected files are shown as 1 file per line. Then I'd just make a quick macro that searches for [, deletes everything within the [], then deletes the [] and moves on to the next line. Then I'll just tell vim to repeat that macro as many times as there are files. When I save and quit vim, ranger renames the files appropriately. If my vim foo were better, I'd permanently store that macro for future use in my .vimrc.

[dilberts_left_nut]

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rename -n 's/\ \[.*\]//' *

maybe (untested).

[oswaldkelso]

I use ThunarBulkRename and it's superb the only reason I install Thunar at all. Unfortunately apparently it's quite tied to Thunar as one of the Dragora devs looked at splitting it away.

On window managers I usually stick a keybind on it, as on my non Debian systems it lives in /usr/lib/ThunarBulkRename

I'm glad you brought this up as I'm trying to switch to mc as I'm trying to setup a non gui system and need to try and get batch rename working in there. Something to try tonight.

[canci]

I'm glad you brought this up

Yeah, so am I! Thanks for the very interesting topic!

[sunrat]

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rename -n 's/\ \[.*\]//' *

maybe (untested).

Perfect, exactly the answer I needed. I even now understand what each part does! Thanks, dln.

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\ \[.*\]

works as the regex in Double Commander Multi Rename Tool as well. I was just missing the dot when I tried it earlier.
That tool is very similar to Thunar's Bulk Rename which I liked when using MX Linux with Xfce several years ago and is the prime reason I installed Double Commander. I've returned to my old favourite DE KDE Plasma now and wasn't going to install Thunar just for that as it was the only thing I liked about Thunar.

[oswaldkelso]

mmv is in the repos Old but Nice as they say. Not sure if I'm talking about the software or myself. Probably just drunk to much Whisky