rename-simple

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

What it does

• Transliterates accented and extended Latin characters to ASCII (é → e, ç → c, œ → oe, ß → ss…)
• 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

Installation

Requires Rust 1.70+.

cargo install --path .

Usage

rename-simple [OPTIONS] [DIR]

You must specify one of -f, -d, or -a to select what to rename. Running rename-simple without any option prints this help.

Option	Description
DIR	Directory to process (default: current directory)
-f	Rename files only
-d	Rename directories only
-a, --all	Rename both files and directories
-r, --recursive	Process subdirectories recursively
-n, --dry-run	Preview renames without touching any file
-v, --verbose	Show details of each rename
-h, --help	Print help
-V, --version	Print version

Examples

Preview all renames (dry-run)

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

  01_ Introduction au Projet.PDF  →  01-introduction-au-projet.pdf
  Réunion d'équipe (2024).docx    →  reunion-d-equipe-2024.docx
  backup.TAR.GZ                   →  backup.tar.gz
  Café Montréal.jpg               →  cafe-montreal.jpg
  à faire .tét                    →  a-faire-tet
  notes.cuicuicuicui              →  notes-cuicuicuicui

Rename files only

$ rename-simple -f ~/Downloads

Directories are left untouched; only files are renamed.

Rename directories only

$ rename-simple -d ~/Projects

Files are left untouched; only directories are renamed.

Rename everything

$ rename-simple -a ~/Downloads

Recursive processing

$ rename-simple -a --recursive ~/Documents

Renames files and directories at every level of the tree.

Verbose output

$ rename-simple -a -v ~/Downloads

Directory: /home/user/Downloads

  01_ Introduction au Projet.PDF  →  01-introduction-au-projet.pdf
  Réunion d'équipe (2024).docx    →  reunion-d-equipe-2024.docx
  Café Montreal.jpg               →  cafe-montreal.jpg

3 entry/entries renamed, 0 error(s).

Tips

If you use -a most of the time, a shell alias saves a few keystrokes:

alias rsa='rename-simple -a'

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

rsa ~/Downloads          # rename everything
rsa -r ~/Documents       # rename everything, recursively
rsa -n ~/Downloads       # dry-run preview

Running the tests

cargo test

Known limitations (TODO)

Recursion can descend into the wrong sibling on a name conflict

When two sibling directories collide after transformation, the rename is correctly skipped (no data is overwritten), but the recursive descent that follows uses the destination name to locate the renamed dir on disk. If the destination already exists as a different directory in the same parent, recursion enters that pre-existing directory instead of the original one.

Concrete case:

parent/
├── Cible/                 ← would rename to "cible" but blocked (conflict)
│   └── fichier.txt        ← never visited
└── cible/                 ← pre-existing, gets visited twice

effective_subdir_path in src/main.rs resolves both Cible and cible to parent/cible, so the file inside Cible/ is silently skipped under -r. No data is lost, but recursion coverage is incomplete.

Workaround: rename one of the conflicting directories manually before running -r, or run without -r first to surface the conflict, then re-run after resolving it.

Tracking: see the audit notes from v0.2.4 — fix candidates include detecting the case explicitly in effective_subdir_path and falling back to the original path when the destination existed before the run.

License

MIT