Where does the rename
command come from?
user@host> dpkg -S /usr/bin/rename
dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /usr/bin/rename
Surprisingly, it comes from the rename
package.
pilot6@Pilot6:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/rename
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 окт 17 2013 /usr/bin/rename -> /etc/alternatives/rename
pilot6@Pilot6:~$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/rename
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 апр 29 2016 /etc/alternatives/rename -> /usr/bin/file-rename
pilot6@Pilot6:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/file-rename
rename: /usr/bin/file-rename
dpkg
's job. dpkg
only deals with installed packages. Use update-alternatives --query rename
, it will show you the resolved link path
Jan 19, 2017 at 15:02
dpkg
/dpkg-query
offered this info conveniently. However, I don't think dpkg -S
should silently dereference symlinks until it finds a package file. dpkg -S foo
isn't supposed to find the command foo
, it finds the the package that installed the file foo
, and is most useful when invoked with a file's absolute path. It'd be nice if dpkg -S /usr/bin/rename
explained why no package provides that symlink, but I think it should still tell the truth that no package does.
Jan 19, 2017 at 16:57
You will probably find that it's a symbolic link that is managed by the update-alternatives
mechanism:
$ ls -l $(which rename)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Jun 29 2016 /usr/bin/rename -> /etc/alternatives/rename
You can see the optional implementations using
$ update-alternatives --list rename
/usr/bin/file-rename
/usr/bin/prename
and can choose between implementations using
update-alternatives --config rename
FWIW file-rename
is provided by the rename
package, whereas the original prename
is provided by perl
itself. From apt-cache show rename
:
This package provides both a perl interface for renaming files (File::Rename) and a command line tool 'rename' which is intended to replace the version currently supplied by the perl package.
As if this was not already confusing enough, you may also come across yet another rename
from the util-linux
package - see What's with all the renames?
If we're talking about /usr/bin/rename
, which is a pretty nifty perl script, then rename
command belongs to its own separate package.
rename:
Installed: 0.20-4
Candidate: 0.20-4
Version table:
*** 0.20-4 500
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
In case of Korn shell and its derivatives, rename
is a shell built-in command.
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/mksh
$ type rename
rename is a shell builtin
rename
command, yet rename
isn't only referred to /usr/bin/rename
, as you see in my answer. Users who have ksh or mksh shells might not be aware of that. When I personally started with mksh
, I was very baffled when rename
wasn't accepting the regular expression, until I realized those were two different things. Also, don't take my words "If we're talking about x" literally, consider it as a way of saying "In case of "
Jan 19, 2017 at 14:59
rename
that ships with Fedora is a different one, though. It seems to be a compiled program and it is not nearly as powerful as therename
that ships with Ubuntu. So be careful when you use scripts on a different Linux distribution.prename