Need a script to mass rename files recursively

[dnielsen78]

I need a either a script or perl script that will allow me to mass rename files, folders, and sub folders. I need to replace special chars in the current file names with underscores. I was able to make this happen in a single directory, but not recursively. Any help would be wonderful.

Here is what does it in a single directory.

for file in *
do
mv "$file" $(echo "$file" | sed 's/[^A-Za-z0-9_.]/_/g')
done

[Zeroangel]

I don't know enough about bash to write a good script for you, but couldnt you run a command like this?

ls -R | grep mp3

And grab the files with a certain extension and pass it off to sed somehow?

If learning how to do this via bash isnt important to you you COULD always take the easy way out and download krename (QT/KDE) or pyRename (GTK/Gnome)

Both are really excellent programs

[dnielsen78]

"I don't know enough about bash to write a good script for you, but couldnt you run a command like this?

ls -R | grep mp3"

Thanks for the reply. But that doesn't quite get me what I need. That would give me all the files with mp3 in them. But what I need is something that will find special characters, then replace those characters with underscores.

I will check out the programs you named.

Thanks

[i92guboj]

I need a either a script or perl script that will allow me to mass rename files, folders, and sub folders. I need to replace special chars in the current file names with underscores. I was able to make this happen in a single directory, but not recursively. Any help would be wonderful.

Here is what does it in a single directory.

for file in *
do
mv "$file" $(echo "$file" | sed 's/[^A-Za-z0-9_.]/_/g')
done

find . -printf '%f\n' | while read file; do
  newfile=$(echo "$file" | sed 's/[^A-Za-z0-9_.]/_/g')
  if [ ! "$newfile" == "$file" ]; then
    echo mv "$file" "$newfile"
  fi
done

Untested.

If you like the output, remove the "echo" in front of the "mv" to do the real work.

[dnielsen78]

I tried the code you posted and I get an error on line 7: syntax error: unexpected end of file.

[i92guboj]

Are you sure you didn't miss a closing quotation mark, "done", "fi", parentheses or bracket anywhere?

I just tested it (copy/paste) and it seems to work ok.

[dnielsen78]

o.k I must of missed something. Now it appears to be working with one small issue. It doesn't seem to want to go down recursively though the directory. I get the following error.

mv: cannot stat `3-2-1': No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `1-2-3.txt': No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `1-2-3-4': No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `2-3-4.txt': No such file or directory

Here is what I have as a test

sled:~/renametest/1_2_3_4 # pwd
/root/renametest/1_2_3_4
sled:~/renametest/1_2_3_4 # ls -R
.:
1-2-3-4 1-2-3.txt 2-3-4.txt 3-2-1

./1-2-3-4:

./3-2-1:
sled:~/renametest/1_2_3_4 #


Thanks for any help, I really really appreciate this.

[i92guboj]

Ops, I chose the wrong print format specifier, %p should work I guess. I also added some code not to touch the directory names, if you want to change them as well you will have to do so in a separate step anyway, because otherwise no one can guarantee that the paths will be consistent during all the process.

find . -type f -printf '%p\n' | while read file; do
  oldfile=$(basename "$file")
  newfile=$(echo "$oldfile" | sed 's/[^A-Za-z0-9_.]/_/g')
  if [ ! "$newfile" == "$oldfile" ]; then
    echo mv "$file" "${file%$oldfile}$newfile"
  fi
done

[dnielsen78]

Nice it works great!

Thanks so much for helping me out!