What if you could use sed to rename files?
Well, now you can.
sednames is a utility that lets you specify a program for sed on the command-line, which it then uses to rename the files that you also specify on the command-line.
The twist is that, unlike other batch-renamers, sednames also supports your VCS. For the most common cases (svn, hg, bzr, and git), there’s a –vcs option:
% sednames -e 's/Replace/Mix/' --vcs=hg *
This command-line will use Mercurial (hg mv) to rename every file by replacing “Replace” with “Mix”. Of course, if a name doesn’t contain “Replace”, then that name will be unchanged and sednames is smart enough to not try to rename that file.
Not only that, but just in case you’re using some oddball VCS (or you want to copy instead of rename, or something), sednames supports using any program to rename your files, as long as it accepts both the before and after names in its arguments. The –help output is more specific, but to put it simply, it works similarly to find‘s -exec option.
You can download the current revision directly, or use the Mercurial repository to follow or contribute to its development.
