Renaming a file via terminal

[John A]

Bit of a silly mistake here...

I was on Inkscape, made a *.SVG and went to save it. Now, I went to overwrite a *.GIF file and I saved it as a *.GIF file. So now I have a SVG saved as a GIF in the folder with all my photography.

I'm assuming the file is being read wrong and/or it can't generate a thumbnail. But I open it, go to rename it and then it freezes. Sometimes the whole pc freezes, but not always.

Any help would be appreciated, John.

[nothingspecial]

You rename a file

mv file.ext new_name.ext

Don`t type mv *.GIF *.SVG or you will rename every GIF to a SVG

[John A]

You rename a file

mv file.ext new_name.ext

Don`t type mv *.GIF *.SVG or you will rename every GIF to a SVG

Tried this. Came up with both:

john@john-desktop:~$ mv vilkija_COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg
mv: cannot stat `vilkija_COA.gif': No such file or directory

and

john@john-desktop:~$ mv vilkija COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg
mv: target `vilkija_COA.svg' is not a directory

[WorMzy]

You need to cd to the directory containing the images first, or else use the full path.

e.g.

cd Pictures
mv vilkija_COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg

OR

mv /home/username/Pictures/vilkija_COA.gif /home/username/Pictures/vilkija_COA.svg

(replace username with your username, obviously)

Oh, and if the filename has a space in it, then use a backslash to escape the space. e.g.

mv vilkija\ COA.gif vilkija\ COA.svg

[nothingspecial]

Does the file have a space in it?

If so you need to escape the space

mv vilkija\ COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg

Do you already have a file
vilkija_COA.svg
mv will rename a file or directory unless the target directory exists in which case it will move it inti oi.

[John A]

cd Pictures
mv vilkija_COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg

mv /home/username/Pictures/vilkija_COA.gif /home/username/Pictures/vilkija_COA.svg

mv vilkija\ COA.gif vilkija\ COA.svg

mv vilkija\ COA.gif vilkija_COA.svg

I tried all these and none worked. Though I said my photography, I din't mean my "Pictures" folder. I mean a folder called "Wiki Images" on my "Desktop". Probably why I ended up doing one of them wrong.

[nothingspecial]

cd ~/Desktop/Wiki

or open a terminal and drop the Wiki folder into it. It won`t eat it, it will just take the terminal there.

[AlphaLexman]

You can 'rename' a .svg file to a .gif ... but the file is still a .svg file.

file vilkija_COA.gif

[John A]

cd ~/Desktop/Wiki

or open a terminal and drop the Wiki folder into it. It won`t eat it, it will just take the terminal there.

You can 'rename' a .svg file to a .gif ... but the file is still a .svg file.

file vilkija_COA.gif

@nothingspecial I tried your code, and it didn't work (see output below)
Also, I can't drag the folder as my Desktop has literally just froze. It's becoming more unstable by the second.

@AlphaLexman And yet it's killing my PC... :/

john@john-desktop:~$ cd ~/Desktop/Wiki Images
bash: cd: /home/john/Desktop/Wiki: No such file or directory

[AlphaLexman]

If a directory has a 'space' in it, you will need to put a backslash \ in front of the space.

john@john-desktop:~$ cd ~/Desktop/Wiki Images

should be:

john@john-desktop:~$ cd ~/Desktop/Wiki\ Images