How can I convert all “x”s to “y”s in filenames for a specific directory from the command line?

Question

I have been naming files, of out habit as a programmer working on a server command line, with underscores “_” rather than spaces “"—because from the command line you have to escape spaces—but that is unnecessary outside of the command line and is quickly getting old. I would like to keep everything uniform while switching to spaces.

From the “Terminal,” I’m wondering how can I convert all “x”s to “y”s in filenames for a specific directory on Mac OS X? Note that “x” means just anything and with “y” simply being a space.

I’d like to do this recursively, handling all sub-directories rather than only one folder at a time.

Answer 1

From the “Terminal,” I’m wondering how can I convert all “x”s to “y”s in filenames for a specific directory on Mac OS X? Note that “x” means just anything and with “y” simply being a space.

I’d like to do this recursively, handling all sub-directories rather than only one folder at a time.

Adapting the some the basic sed concept that @meatspace refers to in his comment (which is located on this page) and adding find into the mix I came up with this script:

find . -type d -path '*/\.*' -prune -o -not -name '.*' -type f |\
  while read FULL_ITEM_PATH
  do
    FILE_DIRNAME=$(dirname "${FULL_ITEM_PATH}");
    FILE_BASENAME=$(basename "${FULL_ITEM_PATH}");
    mv "${FILE_DIRNAME}"/"${FILE_BASENAME}" "${FILE_DIRNAME}"/"$(echo $FILE_BASENAME | sed -e 's/_/ /g')";
  done

That will use find to find all files from the current directory you are in—including child directories/files—and then search for underscores in filenames (_) and change them to spaces () as desired. The script ignores “dot files”/“invisible files” like .DS_Store via -prune -o -not -name '.*' and then the core logic only acts on the actual filename—not the directory name—by separating the file basename from the directory name.

I created a test directory tree on my Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) machine with files that contain underscores (_) in their names—with some nested in a child directory—like this:

./foo_bar
./foo_bar_two
./foo_bar_two_three
./foo_bar_two_three_bleagh.txt
./nested/foo_bar
./nested/foo_bar_two
./nested/foo_bar_two_three
./nested/foo_bar_two_three_bleagh.txt
./nested_foo/foo_bar
./nested_foo/foo_bar_two
./nested_foo/foo_bar_two_three
./nested_foo/foo_bar_two_three_bleagh.txt

Then I ran that script and they were all automatically changed to use spaces () as desired like this:

./foo bar
./foo bar two
./foo bar two three
./foo bar two three bleagh.txt
./nested/foo bar
./nested/foo bar two
./nested/foo bar two three
./nested/foo bar two three bleagh.txt
./nested_foo/foo bar
./nested_foo/foo bar two
./nested_foo/foo bar two three
./nested_foo/foo bar two three bleagh.txt

While the script works, if you want to do a simple “dry run” to see what files the script would act on replace the mv command to echo like this:

find . -type d -path '*/\.*' -prune -o -not -name '.*' -type f |\
  while read FULL_ITEM_PATH
  do
    FILE_DIRNAME=$(dirname "${FULL_ITEM_PATH}");
    FILE_BASENAME=$(basename "${FULL_ITEM_PATH}");
    echo "${FILE_DIRNAME}"/"${FILE_BASENAME}" "${FILE_DIRNAME}"/"$(echo $FILE_BASENAME | sed -e 's/_/ /g')";
  done

The nice thing about using echo to debug is you can also see exactly what is happening in the core of your script. So while I have coded this script to fit the exact needs as specified in this question, feel free to experiment with it to adapt it to newer needs/ideas if they come up.

Answer 2

When in relevant directory:

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

This will list the changes to be made - remove echo when you want it to actually do the rename. Like everything *nix, there are a million ways to do this, but the above is pretty clear. If you do this task often, consider saving it in bin as a script.

Answer 3

How about this one liner? (I hope pasting my command here does not screw up the spaces)

for f in `find . -type f -name '*_*'` ; do echo mv "$f" "${f//_/ }"; done        

Seems to work when I tried it. (You need to remove that echo when ready)

Doesn't do any directory renaming. I think that's what you wanted? Recursion seems to work fine. Also handles multiple underscores correctly.

Answer 4

For batch/ complex renaming tasks use rename command

For example to replace space with _ in all the .txt files in current folder

rename 's/ /_'  *.txt

To rename all files recursively

find /path/to/target -type f -exec rename 's/ /_/' '{}' \;

Answer 5

I'd probably use Perl to do it.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Find;

sub rename_files {
   #skip directories
   return if -d $File::Find::name;

   my $newname = $File::Find::name;
   #turn underscores into space. 
      $newname =~ s/_/ /g; 
   rename $File::Find::name, $newname;
}

find ( \&rename_files, 'path_to_change' );