The rename linux function not working as expected

Question

I´m trying to rename a list of files by removing the "tmp." string

for example 1.tmp.tax.html will become 1.tax.html

(base) [david@archlinux ~]$ ls -ltr test/
total 684
-rw------- 1 david users 229779 Nov  7 11:43 1.tmp.tax.html
-rw------- 1 david users 229779 Nov  7 11:43 2.tmp.tax.html
-rw------- 1 david users 229779 Nov  7 11:43 3.tmp.tax.html


rename 's/tax.//' test/*.html

No output message, nothing renamed. What´s wrong???

(base) [david@archlinux ~]$ rename --version
rename from util-linux 2.34

(base) [david@archlinux ~]$ uname -a
Linux archlinux 5.3.7-arch1-2-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT @1572002934 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Answer 1

rename from util-linux doesn't use substitution with regular expressions.

$ rename -h

Usage:
 rename [options] <expression> <replacement> <file>...

So, in your case,

rename .tmp. . test/*.html

BTW, when using the other rename, note that . is special in regular expressions (it matches any character but newline). So, your command would remove eg taxi from file names, too.