Removing part of the file names

Question

I have a bunch of files like this:

file123.txt.452
file456.txt.098
file789.txt.078

How can I remove the second dot and the numbers at the end from the file names?

I tried using rename but I don’t think my regex is correct:

rename 's/txt.*/txt/' *

Answer 1

Try rename 's/txt\..+/txt/' *.

\. is for the literal dot and .+ for anything after it.

The actual name of the command depends on your system. It could be rename, file-rename, perl-rename or something else. The rename command that the above code works with has this in its man entry:

NAME
       rename - renames multiple files

SYNOPSIS
       rename [-bfilnv] [-B prefix] [-S suffix] [-V method] [-Y prefix] [-z suffix]
       [--backup] [--basename-prefix=prefix] [--dry-run] [--force] [--help] [--no-stdin]
       [--interactive] [--just-print] [--link-only] [--prefix=prefix] [--suffix=suffix]
       [--verbose] [--version-control=method] [--version] perlexpr [files]...

DESCRIPTION
       rename renames the filenames supplied according to the rule specified as the first
       argument.  The argument is a Perl expression which is expected to modify the $_ string
       for at least some of the filenames specified.  If a given filename is not modified by
       the expression, it will not be renamed.  If no filenames are given on the command
       line, filenames will be read via standard input.