Ruby Rename

You can write a “better renamer” in any scripting language, but I’m learning Ruby, so I thought i’d give it a go. I started with this basic one-liner I got from a friend

alias rubyrename='ruby -e "a = ARGV.shift; b = ARGV.shift; ARGV.each{ |f| File.rename(f, f.gsub(a, b)) } "'

I wanted to add some user friendliness for when i forget what the argument syntax is, so I modified it and made it into a normal script, “rubyrename.rb”

#!/opt/local/bin/ruby
unless ARGV.size > 2
  puts "Usage: rubyrename STRING1 STRING2 REGEXP"
  puts "       where STRING1 is to be replace with STRING2 in "
  puts "       all filenames that match REGEXP"
  exit
end
a = ARGV.shift
b = ARGV.shift
ARGV.each do |f|
  unless f == f.gsub(a, b)
    File.rename(f, f.gsub(a, b))
    puts "#{f} -> #{f.gsub(a, b)}"
  end
end

I also added some bells and whistles

Example:

artemis:~/temp daniel$ ls
foofoofoo.01    foofoofoo.02    foofoofoo.03

artemis:~/temp daniel$ rubyrename.rb foo bar *
foofoofoo.01 -> barbarbar.01
foofoofoo.02 -> barbarbar.02
foofoofoo.03 -> barbarbar.03

artemis:~/temp daniel$ rubyrename.rb bar foobar *
barbarbar.01 -> foobarfoobarfoobar.01
barbarbar.02 -> foobarfoobarfoobar.02
barbarbar.03 -> foobarfoobarfoobar.03

artemis:~/temp daniel$ ls
foobarfoobarfoobar.01   foobarfoobarfoobar.02   foobarfoobarfoobar.03

Now all I have to do is alias a shorter command to my rubyrename script in my .profile

alias rrn=rubyrename.rb

Of course rubyrename.rb needs to be in my path, or I could have specified the full path in the alias