In your specific case you can use the following bash command (bash is the default shell on macOS):
for f in *.png; do echo mv "$f" "${f/_*_/_}"; done
Note: If there’s a chance that your filenames start with -, place -- before them[1]:
mv -- "$f" "${f/_*_/_}"
Note: echo is prepended to mv so as to perform a dry run. Remove it to perform actual renaming.
You can run it from the command line or use it in a script.
"${f/_*_/_}"is an application ofbashparameter expansion: the (first) substring matching pattern_*_is replaced with literal_, effectively cutting the middle token from the name.- Note that
_*_is a pattern (a wildcard expression, as also used for globbing), not a regular expression (to learn about patterns, runman bashand search forPattern Matching).
If you find yourself batch-renaming files frequently, consider installing a specialized tool such as the Perl-based rename utility.
On macOS you can install it using popular package manager Homebrew as follows:
brew install rename
Here’s the equivalent of the command at the top using rename:
rename -n -e 's/_.*_/_/' *.png
Again, this command performs a dry run; remove -n to perform actual renaming.
- Similar to the
bashsolution,s/.../.../performs text substitution, but – unlike inbash– true regular expressions are used.
[1] The purpose of special argument --, which is supported by most utilities, is to signal that subsequent arguments should be treated as operands (values), even if they look like options due to starting with -, as Jacob C. notes.