Rename files and folder structures quickly in vim with vim-renamer

Sometimes you stumble upon a task and think by yourself: what if I get this done with vim? This time: renaming and organising files and folders. I'm an avid user of the nerdtree plugin which already does a great job at editing folders, copying files and navigating around filestructures, but for renaming and moving multiple files I still had to resort to bash scripts.

But no longer! I suddenly had an idea: what if I could open the folder structure as a buffer, edit the folder structure as plain text and then make vim execute the commands? Turns out, the vim-renamer plugin does exactly that!

Install the plugin, run the :Renamer command, and the current directory is loaded into a buffer. Use the > and < keys to display files that are one directory level lower. Change around all the filenames or locations of files, type :Ren and all your changes are executed. Very neat!

Kind of silly example but to the use of vim-renamer in combination with macros: renaming all .mdx files to .md: