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Any time renaming gets more complicated than (a) bash curly braces or (b) rename command (Perl script that applies sed expression to each file name), I break ou

Any time renaming gets more complicated than (a) bash curly braces or (b) rename command (Perl script that applies sed expression to each file name), I break out Emacs wdired. Then you can use all the Emacs tools to perform a mass edit across multiple file names, and get them right before committing to the rename. Multiple cursors makes a great addition, as does iedit-mode.

ashton314 7y ago
This. When I figured out you could edit the directory listing like a file and then have Emacs apply those edits I felt like I had acquired superpowers. Actually I generally feel like I have superpowers when I use Emacs. The feeling was stronger than usual that day.
sdegutis 7y ago
Multiple cursors plus C-x C-q on a dired buffer is amazingly powerful: you literally just make changes to the lines in the buffer and run C-c C-c to commit them, or C-c C-k to cancel. I've used this for very powerful mass-renames before. (I imagine it also works for deleting files by removing that line but never needed to try it before.)
- ashton314 7y ago
  I use Emacs inside iTerm2. (i.e. `emacs -nw`) Do you know if the multiple cursors package (which I just found today thanks to your comment) works with that? Or is it only in the native windowed version?
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    It works with terminal-based emacs too. It just inverses the background color of cells to fake the extra cursors.
    - ashton314 7y ago
      That is a glorious hack. Thanks! I'll try it out for a spin!
anthk 7y ago
vidir + vi/ed does the same. It puts the directory as a text buffer, with an entry per line.