LOlorenzohess·Jul 15, 2025
See vimv (https://github.com/thameera/vimv) for a minimal version of this in the CLI, using Vim as the editor.
In Show HN: VS Code extension to edit the filesystem like a text bufferthameera
vimv
Shell2017–2025
thameera / vimv
vimv
Batch-rename files using Vim
8Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
690GitHub stars
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What it is
Batch-rename files using Vim
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Where it is used
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What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-08-13 21:31:33 UTC to 2025-07-15 11:13:07 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesThere are a lot of tools dedicated to this. My past favorite is vimv [1].
However, for me this operation is so rare that having a separate command just for mass-renaming files does not seem to be justified.
[1]: https://github.com/thameera/vimv
In RnR: CLI tool to batch rename files and directories" ... renaming many files ..."
I think folks should be aware of 'vimv' which opens your pwd in an editor and you just edit your filenames in 'vi' ... and all of the renaming happens upon saving and quitting.
Not sure if this is the official/canonical distribution, but for what it's worth:
https://github.com/thameera/vimv
In New(ish) command line toolsGit-compatible bulk renaming tool using Vim
2 points · Open discussionyou might also be interested in vimv and vimcp
https://github.com/thameera/vimv
https://github.com/danieldugas/vimcp
In Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)Links for mass moving mentioned in the page:
- 2018: https://github.com/lgommans/vinamer
- 2017: https://github.com/thameera/vimv
- 2017: https://github.com/abaldwin88/roamer
- 2006: https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/ , `vidir`
In Renaming files with mv without typing the name two timesRenaming a single file is not very interesting. Renaming a whole bunch of files is much more interesting, and when I need to do that, I use vimv[0].
[0]: https://github.com/thameera/vimv
In Renaming files with mv without typing the name two timesI do not use a terminal based file manager - I find that a better workflow for me is to use sshfs to create a local mount on my laptop and then just use the Finder to browse ... which gives me preview, etc.
HOWEVER, there is a specific use-case - renaming a bunch of files in a directory - where I do use a "file manager" and that file manager is 'vimv'.[1]
vimv is a very simple tool - you run vimv in a directory and suddenly the vi editor opens up with the contents of that directory. You then use the vi editor to edit the filenames any way you like. Upon :wq, the files in that directory are renamed.
Very useful - and in many cases, much faster than crafting a sed/awk one liner to do the renaming (especially if some of the renaming is arbitrary or random).
[1] https://github.com/thameera/vimv
In Nnn – a terminal file manager for programmers