How do I rename files with spaces using the Linux shell?

Question

I named a number of files with spaces in them, and I want to replace the space with "_". However, every time I write a command in the shell with the file name (eg "Spring 2011"), the shell doesn't recognize the file or directory. What can I do about this? Is there any way to use the unicode character for a space?

Answer 1

Escape the space, e.g. Spring\ 2011, or use quotes, e.g. 'Spring 2011'. In the future, it's typically a bad idea to use file names with spaces in them on any *NIX.

If you've got rename, you can use this:

rename ' ' '_' [filenames...]

Answer 2

If your machine has the rename command, then this will change all spaces to underscores in all files/dirs in the current working directory:

rename 's/ /_/g' *

Answer 3

mv "Spring 2011.file" Spring_2011.file should tell the command-line to take the quoted string as a single input.

Answer 4

If you don't have rename or prefer to use just the shell:

for f in *\ *; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done

Answer 5

I had a bunch of files with ".jpg;1" as the suffix. I fixed it by:

rename 's/;1//' *