8

I have a bunch of wav files I converted to mp3 files using ffmpeg.

Now the mp3 files are all named file.wav.mp3.

How can I remove the .wav suffix while keeping the rest of the file name? I would like to do this on a whole directory at once.

7

8 Answers 8

20

With a shell loop, removing the shortest "double dot suffix"

for f in *.wav.mp3; do echo mv "$f" "${f%.*.*}.mp3"; done

or (my personal favorite for things like this) with mmv from package mmv

mmv -n '*.wav.mp3' '#1.mp3'

Remove the echo or the -n as appropriate once you are happy that they are doing the right thing.

3
  • thanks, i like the mmv option. really simple Jul 29, 2020 at 20:23
  • If you are using zsh, zmv is also great.
    – 0x5453
    Jul 31, 2020 at 12:39
  • I always recommend using mv -n or -i for bulk/automated renames like this, to avoid the possibility of silently & irreversibly deleting files if there's a name conflict. Jul 31, 2020 at 22:25
19

Read man rename and do something like:

rename 's/.wav.mp3/.mp3/' *.wav.mp3

You may have to sudo apt install rename, first.

4
  • 3
    For this to work, you should install the rename package first. It is not installed by default.
    – Puspam
    Jul 29, 2020 at 19:54
  • 7
    ... perhaps s/\.wav\.mp3$/.mp3/ to err on the safe side...? Jul 29, 2020 at 19:54
  • 1
    I included an example in my answer. Didn't that help?
    – waltinator
    Jul 29, 2020 at 20:07
  • 7
    I recommend always running rename with the -n option first to see what it will do, then removing -n once one is satisfied. Jul 29, 2020 at 20:26
7

In the file browser in Ubuntu, you can select multiple files and rename them according to a pattern by just hitting F2 or right-clicking and selecting Rename.

Here I am replacing x with _by_. In your case you can replace .wav with an empty string.

rename multiple files in Ubuntu

1
  • Thanks Mr Felix U for this tip. I have been using RANGER for this operation for a long time. But this is much simpler.
    – user587469
    Jul 30, 2020 at 18:37
4

As you can see there are multiple ways to achieve this. Another way using the basename command is shown below:

for file in ./*.wav.mp3
do
    mv "$file" "$(basename "$file" .wav.mp3)".mp3 
done
2
  • @steeldriver Thank you for pointing to this nice article. I have updated the answer accordingly.
    – turbulence
    Jul 30, 2020 at 3:56
  • 2
    I added quotes around the command substitution as well - remember, if $file contains whitespace, then basename "$file" .wav.mp3 will as well. Jul 30, 2020 at 10:51
2

If you have all the files named in .wav.mp3 format, then use the following command:

for i in *.wav.mp3; do echo $i; mv "$i" "${i::-8}.mp3"; done
2
  • 1
    String manipulation takes negative values so "${i::-8}.mp3" should generate same result. Better to quote the whole string than to concat the strings
    – user986805
    Jul 30, 2020 at 5:53
  • Thanks for the suggestion. I have edited it.
    – Puspam
    Jul 30, 2020 at 9:54
1

When in the directory with the .wav.mp3 files:

for i in *.wav.mp3; do mv "$i" "$(echo $i | sed s/.wav//g)"; done

That said, you may be able to use the same for your ffmpeg command so you don't have to rename them later.

0

I just want to add a tool tip:

A real nice program for such tasks is emv.

You run it as `emv .wav.mp3 and it opens an editor. You can then use search & replace. Then you save the file and close the editor and the program renames your files.

This is especially handy, when you know how to use an advanced editor like vim, but even when most simple editors support search & replace, what is what you usually need for problems like yours.

0
#!/bin/bash
for i in *
do
 #Define the string value
 text="$i"

 # Set .wav as the delimiter
 IFS='.wav.'

 #Read the split words into an array based on space delimiter
read -a strarr <<< "$text"
mv "$i" "${strarr[0]).mp3" #changing input file name


done

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