Replace a word in a directory name and in the filenames in that directory
If your structure only has two levels, you don't need to use recursion.
Don't parse filenames with sed
. If you want to use regex and sed
style syntax to rename files, use rename
. If you're using Ubuntu 17.10, you need to install it
sudo apt install rename
Then you can use pa4080's answer.
With rename
, use the -n
option for testing.
rename -n 'expression' file(s)
You could also just use the mv
command. As a one-line command:
for d in ./*/; do mv -v "$d" "${d/Edition/Volume}"; done; for f in ./*/*; do mv -v "$f" "${f/Edition/Volume}"; done
You can use echo
for testing with mv
, ie echo mv -v source dest
, but it gives inaccurate results here, unless you test and then run the loops separately.
As a script:
#!/bin/bash
# rename directories first
for d in ./*/; do
mv -v "$d" "${d/Edition/Volume}"
done
# now rename files
for f in ./*/*; do
mv -v "$f" "${f/Edition/Volume}"
done
mv
and rename
recognise --
to indicate the end of options. Since all paths begin with ./
in this example, we do not need to use that, but if paths may begin with -
, then use --
at the end of options, eg rename -n -- 's/foo/bar/' *
, to prevent those paths being interpreted as options.
You could use the command rename
two times to accomplish this task:
rename 's/Edition/Volume/' */ # rename the directories
rename 's/Edition/Volume/' */*.pdf # rename the PDF files inside
Here are two similar questions:
- Recursive bash script
- Explaining a shell script to recursively print full directory tree
On multi- level directories, you can do it in one step, but the issue is that you need to make sure to rename the directories from bottom to top, to prevent the command or script to change the directory name before its content is changed.
In python, you can use:
os.walk
in combination with
topdown=False
In a script:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import shutil
import sys
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(sys.argv[1], topdown=False):
for f in files:
shutil.move(
root+"/"+f, root+"/"+f.replace("Edition", "Volume").strip()
)
for dr in dirs:
shutil.move(
root+"/"+dr, root+"/"+dr.replace("Edition", "Volume").strip()
)
Save the script as change_name.py
, run it with the directory as argument:
python3 /path/to/change_name.py <directory>
This works recursively on any number of levels.
Use find
with the -depth
option combined with prename
:
find [DIRS...] -depth | prename -n 's|Edition(?=[^/]*$)|Volume|'
Explanation:
-depth
selects directory children before their parents. A tool “consuming” the selected path names for renaming can then rename children before their parents.s|Edition(?=[^/]*$)|Volume|
replaces the first occurrence ofEdition
in the path name withVolume
but only if the remainder doesn't contain a/
, i. e. it only applies to the last path name component (achieved by the positive look-ahead(?=[^/]*$)
).-n
tellsprename
to not actually rename the paths but to print how it would rename them. Remove this option to actually rename them.