I had a bunch of folders with some old photos, and I needed to randomize the filenames as an easy way to get a random selection of files. This should’ve been easy, but I made the mistake of googling the answer instead of writing this one-liner myself because I felt lazy.
Google returns hundreds of hits, and almost every discussion is replete with bad code and dumb suggestions. I saw one “answer” where the guy proposed an example that would’ve renamed all your files using the same name, effectively deleting everything. Another sample code removed the file extensions.
So here’s my take on this apparently not-so-trivial task:
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f \
-regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*\.([jpegJPEG]{3,4})$' | while read f
do
/bin/mv "${f}" "$(echo "${f}" | sha1sum | cut -f1 -d' ').${f##*.}"
done
And here’s another option that uses uuidgenthat would address any issues arising from the deterministic nature of the SHA-1 hash and the tiny chance of a filename collision:
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f \
-regextype posix-extended -regex '^.*\.([jpegJPEG]{3,4})$' | while read f
do
/bin/mv "${f}" "$(uuidgen).${f##*.}"
done
Experienced Unix/Linux System Administrator with 20-year background in Systems Analysis, Problem Resolution and Engineering Application Support in a large distributed Unix and Windows server environment. Strong problem determination skills. Good knowledge of networking, remote diagnostic techniques, firewalls and network security. Extensive experience with engineering application and database servers, high-availability systems, high-performance computing clusters, and process automation.
