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Sheldon McGee
Asked: 2012-09-17 12:49:35 +0800 CST

Rename a file (extension) on Mac without changing the created date?

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I have several .JPG files and I want them to be .jpg files but every suggested rename script uses "mv" and the manual page (on Mountain Lion) for mv says it does a copy and delete which explains why when I run the script the "created/modified/etc" dates are all changed to the current date. I don't want that to happen. What can I do?

mac-osx

2 Answers

  1. So, I want to mess around with these. I even found a good old file, modified in 2006.

    $ stat -f "%m%t%Sm %N" *
1347657595  Sep 14 23:19:55 2012 1.JPG
1347715529  Sep 15 15:25:29 2012 2.JPG
1156277764  Aug 22 22:16:04 2006 3.JPG
1347657554  Sep 14 23:19:14 2012 4.JPG
1347657554  Sep 14 23:19:14 2012 5.JPG
1347741772  Sep 15 22:42:52 2012 6.JPG

    Make a new dir for them

    $ mkdir renamed

    Run through them with a loop

    $ for i in *.JPG ; do cp -p $i renamed/`echo $i|sed 's/JPG$/jpg/g'` ; rm $i ; done

    Now, they're in newdir and removed from current dir. But we want them back - can't use mv though.

    $ for i in renamed/* ; do cp -p $i . ; rm $i ; done
$ rm -rf renamed/

    Tadaa 

    $ stat -f "%m%t%Sm %N" *
1347657595  Sep 14 23:19:55 2012 1.jpg
1347715529  Sep 15 15:25:29 2012 2.jpg
1156277764  Aug 22 22:16:04 2006 3.jpg
1347657554  Sep 14 23:19:14 2012 4.jpg
1347657554  Sep 14 23:19:14 2012 5.jpg
1347741772  Sep 15 22:42:52 2012 6.jpg
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  2. Use touch -r to set the timestamp of one file to another.

    cp oldfile newfile
touch -r oldfile newfile

    That touch says "Set the timestamp of newfile to the timestamp of oldfile."

    Here's a blog post with more about touch and how to use it.

    All of that copy + touch should not be necessary, though. You say that the manual says that "mv says it does a copy and delete" but that's not accurate. I'm thinking you may have misread it. You should be able to use mv to rename a file. You may be running into a problem because on HFS+, the Mac filesystem, filenames are case-insensitive, so "foo.jpg" is the same as "FOO.JPG".

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