Find multiple files and rename them in Linux

Question

I am having files like a dbg txt  b dbg txt     in a Suse 10 system  I want to write a bash shell script which should rename these files by removing   dbg  from them   Google suggested me to use rename command  So I executed the command rename  dbg txt  txt  dbg  on the CURRENT FOLDER  My actual CURRENT FOLDER contains the below files   CURRENT FOLDER a dbg txt CURRENT FOLDER b dbg txt CURRENT FOLDER XX c dbg txt CURRENT FOLDER YY d dbg txt   After executing the rename command    CURRENT FOLDER a txt CURRENT FOLDER b txt CURRENT FOLDER XX c dbg txt CURRENT FOLDER YY d dbg txt   Its not doing recursively  how to make this command to rename files in all subdirectories  Like XX and YY I will be having so many subdirectories which name is unpredictable  And also my CURRENT FOLDER will be having some other files also

User · Answer

classic solution   for f in   find   -name   dbg     do mv  f   echo  f   sed  s  dbg      done

User · Answer

For renaming recursively I use the following commands   find -iname        rename -v  s   - g

User · Answer

find -execdir rename https   stackoverflow com a 16541670 895245 works directly only for suffixes  but this will work for arbitrary regex replacements on basenames  PATH  usr bin find   -depth -execdir rename  s  dbg txt    txt           or to affect files only  PATH  usr bin find   -type f -execdir rename  s  dbg txt    txt           -execdir first cds into the directory before executing only on the basename  Tested on Ubuntu 20 04  find 4 7 0  rename 1 10  Convenient and safer helper for it find-rename-regex       set -eu   find and replace  quot  1 quot    PATH  quot   echo  quot  PATH quot    sed -E  s                  g   quot        find   -depth -execdir rename  quot   2 --n  quot   quot s   find and replace  quot             GitHub upstream  Sample usage to replace spaces     with hyphens  -   Dry run that shows what would be renamed to what without actually doing it  find-rename-regex    - g   Do the replace  find-rename-regex    - g  -v  Command explanation The awesome -execdir option does a cd into the directory before executing the rename command  unlike -exec  -depth ensure that the renaming happens first on children  and then on parents  to prevent potential problems with missing parent directories  -execdir is required because rename does not play well with non-basename input paths  e g  the following fails  rename  s findme replaceme g  acc acc  The PATH hacking is required because -execdir has one very annoying drawback  find is extremely opinionated and refuses to do anything with -execdir if you have any relative paths in your PATH environment variable  e g    node modules  bin  failing with   find  The relative path      node modules  bin    is included in the PATH environment variable  which is insecure in combination with the -execdir action of find   Please remove that entry from  PATH  See also  https   askubuntu com questions 621132 why-using-the-execdir-action-is-insecure-for-directory-which-is-in-the-path 1109378 1109378 -execdir is a GNU find extension to POSIX  rename is Perl based and comes from the rename package  Rename lookahead workaround If your input paths don t come from find  or if you ve had enough of the relative path annoyance  we can use some Perl lookahead to safely rename directories as in  git ls-files   sort -r   xargs rename  s findme             replaceme g        I haven t found a convenient analogue for -execdir with xargs  https   superuser com questions 893890 xargs-change-working-directory-to-file-path-before-executing 915686 The sort -r is required to ensure that files come after their respective directories  since longer paths come after shorter ones with the same prefix  Tested in Ubuntu 18 10

User · Answer

small script i wrote to replace all files with  txt extension to  cpp extension under  tmp and sub directories recursively     bin bash  for file in   find  tmp -name    txt   do   mv  file   echo   file    sed -r  s  txt  cpp g   done

User · Answer

If you just want to rename and don t mind using an external tool  then you can use rnm  The command would be    on current folder rnm -dp -1 -fo -ssf   dbg  -rs    dbg        -dp -1 will make it recursive to all subdirectories   -fo implies file only mode   -ssf   dbg  searches for files with  dbg in the filename   -rs    dbg    replaces  dbg with empty string   You can run the above command with the path of the CURRENT FOLDER too   rnm -dp -1 -fo -ssf   dbg  -rs    dbg     path to the directory

User · Answer

You can use find to find all matching files recursively     find   -iname   dbg   -exec rename  dbg txt  txt             EDIT  what the      and    are   The -exec argument makes find execute rename for every matching file found       will be replaced with the path name of the file  The last token     is there only to mark the end of the exec expression   All that is described nicely in the man page for find    -exec utility  argument                 True if the program named utility returns a zero value as its          exit status   Optional arguments may be passed to the utility           The expression must be terminated by a semicolon           If you          invoke find from a shell you may need to quote the semicolon if          the shell would otherwise treat it as a control operator   If the          string        appears anywhere in the utility name or the argu-          ments it is replaced by the pathname of the current file           Utility will be executed from the directory from which find was          executed   Utility and arguments are not subject to the further          expansion of shell patterns and constructs

User · Answer

with bash   shopt -s globstar nullglob rename  dbg txt  txt     dbg

User · Answer

You can use this below   rename --no-act  s   html    php     html     html

User · Answer

Scipt above can be written in one line   find  tmp -name    txt  -exec bash -c  mv  0   echo   0    sed -r   s  txt  cpp g

[linux] Find multiple files and rename them in Linux

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