Chris Hofstaedtler <z...@debian.org> writes: > If the util-linux rename should be made easier to use, then it should > become the one and only provider of /usr/bin/rename, and it should not > be in an essential package.
The two programs are very, very different, and I suspect the util-linux version would not be suitable for what /usr/bin/rename is currently used for inside Debian. For those who aren't familiar with the history of this, the Perl version which is currently installed as /usr/bin/rename takes argibrary Perl code applies it to each file name to come up with the new file name. It doesn't even have to be a regular expression; it can be a tiny Perl program (and I have used it that way before). The util-linux rename only does simple string substitution and has a completely different command line syntax (it takes two strings as its first two arguments and then a list of files, whereas the Perl rename takes a block of Perl code and then a list of files). They perform somewhat similar conceptual functions, but they're really entirely different and incompatible programs that unfortunately for a variety of historical reasons have ended up with the same name, not versions of the same basic tool. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>