How to rename files using wildcard in bash?

Question

I was trying to rename some files to another extension:

# mv  *.sqlite3_done *.sqlite3

but got an error:

mv: target '*.sqlite3' is not a directory

Why?

Answer 1

mv can only move multiple files into a single directory; it can’t move each one to a different name. You can loop in bash instead:

for x in *.sqlite3_done; do
    mv "$x" "${x%_done}"
done

${x%_done} removes _done from the end of $x.