Bulk renaming in a single pass with Go

One popular interview question for system administrators is what is the easiest way to give a set of files a new extension. Take a directory of *.log files, for example: How do you rename them all in one go to *.log.old? It has reportedly happened that candidates suggested the shell command mv *.log *.log.old for this – however, they were then not hired.

There are already quite a few tools lurking around on GitHub that handle such tasks, such as the Renamer tool written in Rust [1]. But such simple utilities make for great illustrative examples, so I wanted to explore some Go techniques for bulk renaming. Paying tribute to the original, the Go variant presented below will also go by the name of Renamer. For example, to rename an entire set of logfiles ending in .log to .log.bak, just use the call shown in line 1 of Listing 1.

Or how about renaming vacation photos currently named IMG_8858.JPG through IMG_9091.JPG to hawaii-2020-0001.jpg through hawaii-2020-0234.jpg? My Go program does that too with the call from line 4, replacing the placeholder {seq} with a counter incremented by one for each renamed file, which it pads with leading zeros to four digits.

[...]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Bulk Renaming

    When it comes to renaming multiple files, the command line offers time-saving options in the form of mv, rename, and mmv.

  • rename

    The rename command is a powerful means to simultaneously rename or even move multiple files following a given pattern.

  • Shell Download Manager

    A few lines of shell code and the Gawk scripting language make downloading files off the web a breeze.

  • Swiss File Knife

    Swiss File Knife replaces more than 100 individual command-line tools at once, but it still fits on a USB stick and runs on all major operating systems.

  • Motion Sensor

    Inotify lets applications subscribe to change notifications in the filesystem. Mike Schilli uses the cross-platform fsnotify library to instruct a Go program to detect what's happening.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News