Rename multiple files with /usr/bin/rename using regex

I have a lot of pdfs that I want to rename with /usr/bin/rename.

The files are named in the following pattern:

<rating> <a pretty long title> (<author> <year>).pdf
e.g.: +++ The discovery of some very interesting stuff (Dude 1999).pdf

rating: 1 to 5 '+' signs
year: numerical

They should be renamed into the following pattern:

<author>, <year> <rating> <a pretty long title>.pdf
e.g.: Dude, 1999 +++ The discovery of some very intere开发者_开发百科sting stuff.pdf

I tried to use /usr/bin/rename and wrote this command:

rename  's/(.*)\ (.*)\ \((.*)\ (.*)\).pdf/$3, $4 $1 $2.pdf/' *.pdf

However, the command does not consider that the rating always contains '+' signs and that the year is always numerical. How can I achieve this? I tried something like ([+]{1,5}) and ([0-9]{4}), but it didn't work.

Is rename actually able to interpret something other than (.*) as the input for the variables $1 ... $n?

Thanks for your help!

This works fine for me:

rename 's/(\+{1,5}) (.*) \((.*) ([0-9]{4})\).pdf/$3, $4 $1 $2.pdf/' -- \
    'Dude, 1999 +++ The discovery of some very interesting stuff.pdf'

... however your question doesn't quote the error message, so it's hard to tell what might be wrong in your situation.

Just as a warning, there are two different versions of /usr/bin/rename that are widely found on Linux systems, and which have different syntaxes. I assume that you are using the Perl one, however, since your original command worked at all. That means that you can use any Perl expression to modify the name - see perlre for more details.

Unfortunately Fedora (it's my distro) has worthless version of rename.

But I have changed it for perl version of replace utility.

You can find it at CPAN get and untar archive and then:

# ./Build installdeps
# sudo ./Build install

!!! It actions replace original fedora rename: bin file and manual, but it can be reverted by yum reinstall and may be reverted at next fedora update Also you can install it separately or use alternatives.