Ttgjyuk

How can I add numbers to the files in one directory?

In one directory I have files like below:

fileA
fileB
fileC
fileD

I want to prepend ascending numbers to them, like this:

1_fileA
2_fileB
3_fileC
4_fileD

Thank you in advance.

One of the solutions:

cd <your dir> then run in bash (copy and paste in command-line):

n=1; for f in *; do mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"; done

Bash script case:

#!/bin/bash
n=1
for f in *
do
 if [ "$f" = "rename.sh" ]
 then
 continue
 fi
 mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"
done

save it as rename.sh to dir with files to rename, chmod +x rename.sh then run it ./rename.sh

If there are more than 9 files, I would use printf to pad the number to get the expected sort order, like this

n=0
for f in *
 do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f"
 echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"
done

Remove echo when you see the correct result.

Explanation

In this line, do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f" we create a format for the new filenames and put it into the variable new.

%2d is a 2 digit decimal number. Instead of 2d, you can use 3d etc to get another leading 0 (if you have more than 99 files).

((++n)) increments the variable n (which we set to 0 at the start of the script). Since it is iterated once each time the loop is run, files get incremented name prefixes.

-v makes mv print what will be changed.

-- in the mv statement is to prevent filenames that start with - being interpreted as options.

1. Open your directory in Nautilus.




2. Highlight all of the files.




3. Right-click, and select "Rename..." from the context menu.




4. On the Rename dialog, click the +Add button.




5. Select "1,2,3,4" under "Automatic Numbers"



6. 
   

   Then, in the Rename dialog, in the text entry field, insert an
   underscore "_" character between "[1, 2, 3]" and "[Original file name]".

   
   
   

   It should look like "[1, 2, 3]_[Original file name]"

   
   



7. Click the Rename button.

That’s a job for file-rename (aka perl rename):

file-rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) $i++; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *

This defines a variable, increases it if it’s not set (else it would start with 0 instead of 1) and replaces the beginning of the filename with the number increasing it every time. You can change the format easily, e.g. to make it three-digit (001, 002, …) use "%03d_". Running it with -n only prints the changes, to actually perform the renaming remove this flag.

Example run

$ ls -1
fileA
fileB
fileC
fileD
$ rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) $i++; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *
rename(fileA, 1_fileA)
rename(fileB, 2_fileB)
rename(fileC, 3_fileC)
rename(fileD, 4_fileD)
$ rename 'our $i; if (!$i) $i++; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *
$ ls -1
1_fileA
2_fileB
3_fileC
4_fileD

One option is

cd /path/to/folder/
ls -1v | rename -n -v 's/^/sprintf("%02d_", ++our$i)/e'

• This works fine, except with the file names with new line "n". Switch '-1v'takes care of spaces and tabs,




• Other commands posted here change the order of files with numbers e.g. 10a comes before 1a.




• Whichever suits in a situation.

I had some time to test all these commands. Here are the results.

$ ls
001abc.txt '10a bc.txt' 1abc.txt '2ab c.txt' 'a'$'t''bc.txt'

$ ls -1v | rename -n -v 's/^/sprintf("%02d_", ++our$i)/e'
Reading filenames from file handle (GLOB(0x55cb57991b28))
rename(001abc.txt, 01_001abc.txt)
rename(1abc.txt, 02_1abc.txt)
rename(2ab c.txt, 03_2ab c.txt)
rename(10a bc.txt, 04_10a bc.txt)
rename(a bc.txt, 05_a bc.txt)

$ n=1; for f in *; do echo mv "$f" "$((n++))_$f"; done
mv 001abc.txt 1_001abc.txt
mv 10a bc.txt 2_10a bc.txt
mv 1abc.txt 3_1abc.txt
mv 2ab c.txt 4_2ab c.txt
mv a bc.txt 5_a bc.txt

$ for f in *; do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f"; echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"; done
mv -v -- 001abc.txt 09_001abc.txt
mv -v -- 10a bc.txt 010_10a bc.txt
mv -v -- 1abc.txt 011_1abc.txt
mv -v -- 2ab c.txt 012_2ab c.txt
mv -v -- a bc.txt 013_a bc.txt

$ ./rename.sh 
mv 001abc.txt 1_001abc.txt
mv 10a bc.txt 2_10a bc.txt
mv 1abc.txt 3_1abc.txt
mv 2ab c.txt 4_2ab c.txt
mv a bc.txt 5_a bc.txt

$ rename -n 'our $i; if (!$i) $i++; s/^/sprintf("%d_", $i++)/e' *
rename(001abc.txt, 1_001abc.txt)
rename(10a bc.txt, 2_10a bc.txt)
rename(1abc.txt, 3_1abc.txt)
rename(2ab c.txt, 4_2ab c.txt)
rename(a bc.txt, 5_a bc.txt)
rename(rename.sh, 6_rename.sh)

$ for f in *; do printf -v new "%2d$((++n))_$f"; echo mv -v -- "$f" "$new"; done
mv -v -- 001abc.txt 01_001abc.txt
mv -v -- 10a bc.txt 02_10a bc.txt
mv -v -- 1abc.txt 03_1abc.txt
mv -v -- 2ab c.txt 04_2ab c.txt
mv -v -- a bc.txt 05_a bc.txt
mv -v -- rename.sh 06_rename.sh