rename-simple

A command-line tool that renames files and directories to clean, ASCII-safe slugs.

What it does

• Transliterates accented and extended Latin characters to ASCII (é → e, ç → c, œ → oe, ß → ss…)
• Expands typographic ligatures and compatibility forms (fi → fi, fullwidth Ｆｉｌｅ → file, superscripts ² → 2, ™ → tm, № → no)
• Romanises Greek and Cyrillic letters (Ελληνικά → ellinika, Москва → moskva)
• Lowercases everything
• Replaces spaces and special characters with -; collapses consecutive separators
• Preserves _; cleans up _- and -_ sequences to _
• Strips leading and trailing - / _ before the extension
• Preserves known compound extensions (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, .tar.zst)
• Keeps extensions separate only when they are ASCII alphanumeric and ≤10 characters (.tét is absorbed as -tet, .abcdefghijkl as -abcdefghijkl)
• Skips hidden files (.gitignore, .DS_Store…) and reports naming conflicts
• Reports names that are not valid UTF-8 as errors and leaves them unchanged
• Optionally (-D) deletes a source file that is a byte-for-byte duplicate of an existing target
• Optional cleanup fixes: repairs mojibake (-U), strips HTML tags and entities (-H), or both (-A)

Installation

Requires Rust 1.85+.

# From crates.io
cargo install rename-simple

# Or from source
cargo install --path .

With Nix

The repository is a flake, so no Rust toolchain is needed:

# Run without installing
nix run github:darkone-linux/rename-simple

# Or install into your profile
nix profile install github:darkone-linux/rename-simple

Usage

rename-simple [OPTIONS] [files]...

Each argument is renamed itself, like with rename(1). Globbing is left to the shell: rename-simple *.jpg, or rename-simple dir/**/*.pdf with zsh or bash globstar. Files and directories are both renamed by default; -f / -d restrict renaming to one type. Without arguments, rename-simple prints its help.

Option	Description
[files]...	Entries to rename (files and/or directories)
-f, --files-only	Rename files only
-d, --dirs-only	Rename directories only
-U, --fix-unicode	Repair mojibake (UTF-8 misread as Latin-1/CP1252) before renaming
-H, --fix-html	Strip HTML tags and decode HTML entities before renaming
-A, --fix-all	Apply every cleanup fix: -U and -H
-D, --delete-duplicates	Delete a source that is a byte-for-byte duplicate of an existing target
-n, --dry-run	Show what would be done without renaming or deleting anything
-q, --quiet	Print nothing, not even errors
-v, --verbose	Also list unchanged entries ([X])
-h, --help	Print help
-V, --version	Print version

Renamed entries are printed as [R] lines on standard output, deleted duplicates ([W]) and errors ([E]) on standard error, followed by a summary line. The exit status is 0 when the command line is valid, even if some entries fail, and 2 when it is invalid (unknown option, -f with -d…).

Examples

Preview the renames

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ rename-simple -n *

[R] .: 01_ Introduction au Projet.PDF -> 01_introduction-au-projet.pdf
[R] .: à faire .tét -> a-faire-tet
[R] .: backup.TAR.GZ -> backup.tar.gz
[R] .: Café Montréal.jpg -> cafe-montreal.jpg
[R] .: notes.cuicuicuicui -> notes-cuicuicuicui
[R] .: Réunion d'équipe (2024).docx -> reunion-d-equipe-2024.docx
6 entries matched, 6 entries renamed, 0 error.

Run the same command without -n to apply the renames.

Rename one type of entry

$ rename-simple -f *    # files only, directories are ignored
$ rename-simple -d *    # directories only, files are ignored

Process a whole tree

With zsh, or bash with shopt -s globstar:

$ rename-simple ~/Documents/**/*.pdf

Repair damaged names (mojibake, HTML)

Names from broken downloads or web pages may contain mojibake (UTF-8 read as Latin-1/CP1252) or HTML markup. The cleanup fixes repair the name before it is converted:

$ rename-simple -A *

[R] .: <b>Été 2024.pdf -> ete-2024.pdf
[R] .: Café Montréal.jpg -> cafe-montreal.jpg
[R] .: Tom &amp; Jerry.mp4 -> tom-jerry.mp4
3 entries matched, 3 entries renamed, 0 error.

-U only changes a name that decodes entirely, so a correct name (café.jpg) is never altered; double mojibake (Café) is repaired too. -H decodes named (é), decimal (é) and hexadecimal (é) entities. Block tags (<br>, <p>, <div>, <li>, <h1> to <h6>…) become a space (data<br>client → data-client); inline tags (<b>, <i>, <span>…) are removed (client<b>s → clients). A decoded slash is converted like any other character (Report / Final.txt → report-final.txt).

Conflicts and duplicates

An existing entry is never overwritten. When the new name is taken, the entry is left unchanged and the error says whether both files hold the same bytes:

$ rename-simple *

[E] .: IMG 9572.mov -> File name already exists (identical duplicate, use -D to delete the source)
[E] .: VID 20260819.mp4 -> File name already exists (2 different files)
4 entries matched, 0 entry renamed, 2 errors.

With -D, a source that is a distinct regular file with identical content, compared byte for byte, is deleted:

$ rename-simple -D *

[W] .: IMG 9572.mov -> Identical duplicate, source deleted
[E] .: VID 20260819.mp4 -> File name already exists (2 different files)
4 entries matched, 0 entry renamed, 1 duplicate removed, 1 error.

-A does not imply -D, and -D with -n only announces the deletion. Every other conflict leaves both entries unchanged: different content, a directory, a symlink on either side, or two names for the same entry (hard link, case-insensitive filesystem). Arguments that would get the same new name are all left unchanged.

Verbose output

-v also lists the entries left unchanged:

$ rename-simple -v *

[X] .: notes.txt
[R] .: Mon Fichier.txt -> mon-fichier.txt
[R] .: Москва -> moskva
3 entries matched, 2 entries renamed, 0 error.

Tips

To rename everything in the current directory, run rename-simple *. An alias in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc makes it shorter:

alias rsa='rename-simple *'

Running the tests

cargo test

License

MIT