mvi

Move files by text edit

Organising large amounts of files via the command line is cumbersome. The standard UNIX mv command can rename a file or directory, or move items in bulk, but the two operations cannot be combined. Furthermore, editing capabilities on the command line offered by most shells are too limited to comfortably alter long file or directory names, or add characters from foreign character sets. Names containing spaces or other special characters should be quoted or escaped, adding yet another layer of annoyance.

Larry Wall's rename complements mv with the ability to rename in bulk, but being based on regular expressions it is suited mostly for file sets that share a common naming structure. It also requires fluidity in Perl's regular expression syntax to be useful, which sets a very high bar for entry.

Mvi (which can be seen to be either a contraction of "mv vi" or a more general abbreviation of "move interactively") aims to simplify bulk renames of files and directories by opening the directory listing in a text editor, thus providing a powerful interface for editing destination paths. Names can be changed by editing the lines in place while preserving order. Upon save and exit mvi will show a list of scheduled rename operations and ask for confirmation before performing the changes on disk.

examples

The equivalence of mv bar baz in mvi involves an edit of the first line "bar" into "baz" (not shown, but listed by mvi in summary):

$ ls
bar foo

$ mvi
line 1: bar -> baz
proceed yes/no? y
renamed bar to baz
nothing left to rename.

$ ls
baz foo

Swapping lines results in swapping files:

$ ls
bar foo

$ mvi
line 1: bar -> foo
line 2: foo -> bar
proceed yes/no? y
cycle detected: foo bar
renamed foo to bar_
renamed bar to foo
renamed bar_ to bar
nothing left to rename.

$ ls
bar foo

Items can be organized in subdirectories by simply editing a (relative or absolute) destination path including directory separators.

$ ls
bar foo

$ mvi
line 1: bar -> sub/bar
line 2: foo -> sub/foo
proceed yes/no? y
renamed bar to sub/bar
renamed foo to sub/foo
nothing left to rename.

$ ls
sub/

installation

Mvi does not have any dependencies other than Python3 and can be run directly from the repository. Alternatively it can be installed system wide using Python's setuptools:

python3 setup.py install

Or in ~/.local/bin:

python3 setup.py install --user

Mvi is also available on pypi for installation via pip:

pip3 install mvi