Change the end of multiple similar filenames

Question

I have many files that look similar to this:

56.mp3?referredby=rss

What I want to do is remove the ?referredby=rss so they'll be like this:

56.mp3

How would I do this?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 21 '17 at 13:58

6

If you have Perl rename, it’s as easy as

rename 's/\?referredby=rss//' ./*referredby=rss

With util-linux rename:

rename '?referredby=rss' '' ./*referredby=rss

edited Apr 21 '17 at 13:58

Stéphane Chazelas

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answered Apr 21 '17 at 13:50

Stephen Kitt

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Why do you have to put the `./` in the second part of the first command? – Proletariat Apr 21 '17 at 14:09
That avoids issues with files whose names start with `-` (they would end being interpreted as options rather than files). – Stephen Kitt Apr 21 '17 at 14:16

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '17 at 13:57

Aside from escaping the ? (which has special meaning in glob expressions) this is really no different from renaming any other files: so for example you could use a simple shell loop

for f in *.mp3\?referredby=rss; do mv -- "$f" "${f%\?*}"; done

where ${f%\?*} is a shell parameter expansion that removes the shortest trailing element matching \?*

Change the end of multiple similar filenames

2 Answers2