Get the Perl rename utility instead of the built-in rename

Question

Many sites (including various SO articles) talk about using \"rename\" using Perl expressions to rename files.

This would be perfect, but apparently this is not the

Answer 1

For Debian-family (.deb) distros, I recommend @SzG's answer.

For RedHat-family (.rpm) distros (e.g. Fedora), if your time is precious (like mine), you can download, compile, and install, from source via cpan in one, terse command:

# Install (replace `rename-1.9` below with another version if desired)
curl -L "http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/P/PE/PEDERST/rename-1.9.tar.gz" | tar -xz && ( cd "rename-1.9"; perl "Makefile.PL"; make && make install )

# Cleanup
rm -rf "rename-1.9"

Note:

INSTALL_BASE can be set to modify the base installation directory.

e.g. perl "Makefile.PL" INSTALL_BASE=/usr/local

source