rename-simple

A small Rust CLI tool that renames files and directories to clean, ASCII-safe slugs.

Warning

Breaking change since 0.4.0. The directory-scan mode and the -a/--all and -r/--recursive options have been removed. rename-simple now operates only on the paths you give it, like rename(1). Use your shell's globbing to select entries: rename-simple * instead of rename-simple -a, and rename-simple **/*.pdf instead of -r.

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 (e.g. .tét → absorbed as -tet; .abcdefghijkl (12 chars) → absorbed as -abcdefghijkl)
• Skips hidden files (.gitignore, .DS_Store…) and flags naming conflicts
• 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 an entry renamed itself, like the traditional rename command — globbing is left to the shell (rename-simple *.jpg, or rename-simple dir/**/*.pdf with zsh / bash globstar). Files and directories are both renamed by default; -f / -d act as a type filter. With no arguments, rename-simple prints this 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 (currently -U + -H)
-n, --dry-run	Preview renames without touching any file
-q, --quiet	Print nothing at all
-v, --verbose	Show details of each rename
-h, --help	Print help
-V, --version	Print version

Examples

Preview all renames (dry-run)

$ rename-simple --dry-run ~/Downloads/*

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

Rename files only

$ rename-simple -f ~/Downloads/*

Directories among the arguments are left untouched; only files are renamed.

Rename directories only

$ rename-simple -d ~/Projects/*

Files among the arguments are left untouched; only directories are renamed.

Rename everything

$ rename-simple ~/Downloads/*

Process a whole tree

With a shell that supports recursive globs you can select entries at any depth:

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

Repair damaged names (mojibake, HTML)

Names coming from broken downloads or web scrapers often carry mojibake (UTF-8 read as Latin-1/CP1252) or HTML markup. The cleanup fixes repair the name before the slug pipeline runs:

$ rename-simple -A ~/Downloads/*

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

-U/--fix-unicode is all-or-nothing per name: a file that is already correctly named (café.jpg) is never re-decoded, so the fix is safe to apply everywhere. Double mojibake (Café) is repaired too. -H/--fix-html strips tags and decodes named (é), decimal (é) and hex (é) entities. Block-level tags (<br>, <p>, <div>, <li>, <h1>–<h6>, …) are replaced by a space so the surrounding words stay separated (data<br>client → data-client), while inline tags (<b>, <i>, <span>, …) vanish with no gap (client<b>s → clients). -A/--fix-all applies every cleanup fix.

Verbose output

Verbose mode prints each rename and a summary:

$ rename-simple -v ~/Downloads/*

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

Tips

Since the directory-scan mode is gone, "rename everything in the current directory" is now just rename-simple *. A shell alias makes it a habit:

alias rsa='rename-simple *'

Add this line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc, then:

rsa                      # rename everything in the current directory
rename-simple -n *       # dry-run preview
rename-simple **/*.pdf   # rename every PDF in the tree (zsh / bash globstar)

Running the tests

cargo test

License

MIT