Rename files and directories recursively under ubuntu /bash

I want to rename all files and directories that contain the word "special" to "regular". It should maintain case sensitivity so "Special" won't become "regular".

How can i do this in bash recursively?

A solution using find:

To rename files only:

find /your/target/path/ -type f -exec rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \;

To rename directories only:

find /your/target/path/ -type d -execdir rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \+

To rename both files and directories:

find /your/target/path/ -execdir rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \+

Try doing this (require bash --version >= 4):

shopt -s globstar
rename -n 's/special/regular/' **

Remove the -n switch when your tests are OK

There are other tools with the same name which may or may not be able to do this, so be careful.

If you run the following command (GNU)

$ file "$(readlink -f "$(type -p rename)")"

and you have a result like

.../rename: Perl script, ASCII text executable

and not containing:

ELF

then this seems to be the right tool =)

If not, to make it the default (usually already the case) on Debian and derivative like Ubuntu :

$ sudo update-alternatives --set rename /path/to/rename

(replace /path/to/rename to the path of your perl's rename command.

---

If you don't have this command, search your package manager to install it or do it manually

---

Last but not least, this tool was originally written by Larry Wall, the Perl's dad.

If you don't mind installing another tool, then you can use rnm:

rnm -rs '/special/regular/g' -dp -1 *

It will go through all directories/sub-directories (because of -dp -1) and replace special with regular in their names.

@speakr's answer was the clue for me.

If using -execdir to transform both files and directories, you'll also want to remove -type f from the example shown. To spell it out, use:

find /your/target/path/ -execdir rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \+

Also, consider adding g (global) flag to the regex if you want to replace all occurrences of special with regular in a given filename and not just the first occurrence. For example:

find /your/target/path/ -execdir rename 's/special/regular/g' '{}' \+

will transform special-special.jpg to regular-regular.jpg. Without the global flag, you'll end up with regular-special.jpg.

FYI: GNU Rename is not installed by default on Mac OSX. If you are using the Homebrew package manager, brew install rename will remedy this.

Here is another approach which is more portable and does not rely on the rename command (since it may require different parameters depending on the distros).

It renames files and directories recursively:

find . -depth -name "*special*" | \
while IFS= read -r ent; do mv $ent ${ent%special*}regular${ent##*special}; done

What it does

• use find with -depth parameter to reorder the results by performing a depth-first traversal (i.e. all entries in a directory are displayed before the directory itself).
• do pattern substitutions to only modifiy the last occurence of regular in the path.

That way the files are modified first and then each parent directory.

Example

Giving the following tree:

├── aa-special-aa
│   └── bb-special
│       ├── special-cc
│       ├── special-dd
│       └── Special-ee
└── special-00

It generate those mv commands in that particular order:

mv ./aa-special-aa/bb-special/special-cc ./aa-special-aa/bb-special/regular-cc
mv ./aa-special-aa/bb-special/special-dd ./aa-special-aa/bb-special/regular-dd
mv ./aa-special-aa/bb-special ./aa-special-aa/bb-regular
mv ./aa-special-aa ./aa-regular-aa
mv ./special-00 ./regular-00

To obtain the following tree:

├── aa-regular-aa
│   └── bb-regular
│       ├── regular-cc
│       ├── regular-dd
│       └── Special-ee
└── regular-00

As mentioned by Rui Seixas Monteiro it's best to use the -iregex pattern option with the Find command. I've found the following works and includes the global flag in the regex as mentioned by U007D:

Files:

find /path/ -type f -iregex '.special.' -execdir rename 's/special/regular/g' '{}' +;

Directories:

find /path/ -type d -iregex '.special.' -execdir rename 's/special/regular/g' '{}' +;

Files and Directories

find /path/ -iregex '.special.' -execdir rename 's/special/regular/g' '{}' +;

For those just wanting to rename directories you can use this command:

find /your/target/path/ -type d -execdir rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \;

Note type is now d for directory, and using -execdir.

I haven't been able to work out how to rename both files and directories in a single pass though.

Someone commented earlier that once it renamed the root folder then it couldn't traverse the file tree any more. There is a -d switch available that does a depth traversal from the bottom-up, so the root would be renamed last I believe:

find -d /your/target/path/ -type d -execdir rename 's/special/regular/' '{}' \;

From the manpage (man find):

 -d      Cause find to perform a depth-first traversal, i.e., directories are visited in post-order and all entries in a directory will be
         acted on before the directory itself.  By default, find visits directories in pre-order, i.e., before their contents.  Note, the
         default is not a breadth-first traversal.

For rename version rename from util-linux 2.23.2 the following command worked for me:

find . -type f -exec rename mariadb mariadb-proxy '{}' \;