Sstrhsrtj

I am running Red Hat 7.3.

I typed in rename * *.log * with the hope of removing log from the names of all files.

I don't this has been happening, and in short, I think somehow files are disappearing.

It depends on what program rename is on your system (I can't remember for RHEL). If it's the util-linux rename, you probably renamed your first file over the second one. Here's what happens. (I'll use rename.ul for clarity here.)

With the three files a.log, b.log, and c.log if we give the command rename.ul * *.log *, the shell expands the globs and the final command that runs is:

rename.ul a.log b.log c.log a.log b.log c.log a.log b.log c.log

Now, rename takes the first two as a pattern and a replacement, and applies those to the files named by the rest of arguments. So, basically the command tells to replace a.log with b.log in the names of any of c.log a.log b.log c.log a.log b.log c.log. Only a.log matches, and it's moved over b.log, and you probably get an error message for the next a.log listed.

If your rename was the Perl rename (prename) instead, you would probably have gotten an error without anything happening, since your first filename is likely to not be a valid Perl command. prename also doesn't overwrite files by default.

With the util-linux rename, to remove .log from the file names, you'd use

$ rename.ul .log "" *.log

That would change any matches from the middle of the name too, so v.logger would turn into vger.

With the Perl rename, the command would be

$ prename 's/.log$//' *.log