prename is a utility developed in Perl by Larry Wall (creator of the Perl language) and improved by Robin Barker, which allows you to rename in masses. prename finds all files whose name matches a pattern specified (REGEXP). This utility is part of the perl package in Debian GNU/Linux.
Synopsis
$ $ prename [-v] [-n] [-f] REGEXP files
where:
-v,--verbose: displays the name of the files that were successfully renamed -n,--noact: simulates the operation -f,-force: overwrite existing files
REGEXP: is a PCRE compatible pattern
Examples
Deletes .bak extension for every file under the current DIR
$ rename 's/.bak$//' *.bak
Make to lowercase the name of all files of the current DIR
$ rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *
Find all files whose name contains more than one dash and replace them with single one
$ rename 's/-{2,}/-/g' *
Recommended reading
-man prename