renamer

renamer is a preview-first, undoable batch renaming CLI for local file systems. It wraps a traversal engine, scoped filters, and a newline-delimited .renamer ledger so you can trial changes safely before committing them.

Highlights

Preview every operation with conflict detection before touching the filesystem.
Share a single set of scope flags (--path, --recursive, --include-dirs, etc.) across all commands.
Apply literal replacements, substring removals, extension normalization, positional inserts, or regex-driven renames.
Persist every batch into a .renamer ledger and undo the most recent change set at any time.
Output results in table or plain text formats to fit automation and scripting workflows.

Installation

Prerequisites: Go 1.24+

git clone https://github.com/rogeecn/renamer.git
cd renamer
go install ./...

The renamer binary will be placed in your GOBIN (defaults to $GOPATH/bin).

Usage

The CLI follows the pattern:

renamer [global scope flags] <command> [command args]

Shared scope flags

All subcommands accept these persistent flags:

--path <dir>: Working directory (defaults to current directory).
-r, --recursive: Traverse subdirectories.
-d, --include-dirs: Include directories in results.
--hidden: Include hidden files and directories.
-e, --extensions ".jpg|.png": Pipe-delimited list of extensions to target.
--dry-run: Force preview-only mode.
--yes: Confirm changes without prompting (mutating commands only).

Commands

renamer list [--format table|plain] [--max-depth N] — Preview the files and directories that match the active scope.
renamer replace <pattern...> <replacement> — Replace multiple literal tokens in sequence. Shows duplicates and conflict warnings, then applies when --yes is present.
renamer remove <pattern...> — Strip ordered substrings from names with empty-name protection and duplicate detection.
renamer extension <source-ext...> <target-ext> — Normalize heterogeneous extensions to a single target while keeping a ledger entry for undo.
renamer insert <position> <text> — Insert text at symbolic (^, $) offsets, count forward with numbers (3 or ^3), or backward with suffix tokens like 1$.
renamer regex <pattern> <template> — Rename via RE2 capture groups using placeholders like @1, @2, @0, or escape literal @ as @@.
renamer undo — Revert the most recent mutating command recorded in the ledger.

Example workflow

# Preview JPEG->jpg normalization for a project tree
renamer extension .jpeg .JPG .jpg --recursive --dry-run

# Apply once the preview looks correct
renamer extension .jpeg .JPG .jpg --recursive --yes

# Undo the batch if something looks off
renamer undo

Ledger and undo

Every mutating command appends a newline-delimited JSON entry to .renamer in the working directory, capturing the command, metadata, and operations. renamer undo reads the ledger backwards, renames entries to their previous paths, and rewrites the ledger to keep history consistent. Delete the ledger file if you want a fresh history.

Development

Run the unit, integration, and contract tests with go test ./....
Contract tests live under tests/contract, while integration workflows sit in tests/integration.
Smoke test scripts (scripts/smoke-test-*.sh) exercise end-to-end flows against sample fixtures in testdata/.
CI enforces gofmt; ensure files remain formatted after edits.

Contributions generally go through the composable packages under internal/, keeping cmd/ focused on CLI wiring. See docs/ and specs/ for feature plans and architecture notes.

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