Linux - Replacing spaces in the file names

I have a number of files in a folder, and I want to replace every space character in all file names with underscores. How can I achieve this?

Solution 1:

This should do it:

for file in *; do mv "$file" `echo $file | tr ' ' '_'` ; done

Solution 2:

I prefer to use the command 'rename', which takes Perl-style regexes:

rename "s/ /_/g" *

You can do a dry run with the -n flag:

rename -n "s/ /_/g" *

Solution 3:

Use sh...

for i in *' '*; do   mv "$i" `echo $i | sed -e 's/ /_/g'`; done

If you want to try this out before pulling the trigger just change mv to echo mv.

Solution 4:

If you use bash:

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

Solution 5:

What if you want to apply the replace task recursively? How would you do that?

Well, I just found the answer myself. Not the most elegant solution, (also tries to rename files that do not comply with the condition) but it works. (BTW, in my case I needed to rename the files with '%20', not with an underscore)

#!/bin/bash
find . -type d | while read N
do
     (
           cd "$N"
           if test "$?" = "0"
           then
               for file in *; do mv "$file" ${file// /%20}; done
           fi
     )
done