Ubuntu – Convert all .ape files to .flac in different subfolders

avconvcommand lineformat conversion

I was trying to convert some .ape files to .flac files using avconv on command line; obviously, avconv is not the main point here; its syntax is pretty straightforward, avconv -i inputApeFile.ape outputFlacFile.flac.

The point is that the files are nested in more subfolders; i.e., I have the Artist folder, then various CD subfolders, each of one contain different .ape files.
How can I convert all the files and then save them in the same folder of the original file but with the .flac extension?

If it is possible, I'd like to use only shell command on a single line without using scripts. I think it should be something like that

avconv -i 'ls -R | grep ape' '???'

but I'm stuck with the second part (maybe using sed??!?)

Best Answer

The command that you need is:

find /path/to/MainDir/ -type f -name "*.ape"  -execdir sh -c ' avconv -i "$1" "${1%.ape}.flac" ' _ {} \;

This will find each file that has .ape suffix and then convert it with the same filename with .flac suffix to the same location as original file is located.

{} is the path of current found file.
_{See the test from here}

The Bash for loop

for f in ./*.doc; do
    # do some stuff here with "$f"
    # remember to quote it or spaces may misbehave
done

Using `find`

The find command has a lovely little exec command that's great for running things (with some caveats). Find is better than basic globbing because you can really filter down on the files you're selecting. Be careful of the odd syntax.

find . -iname '*.doc' -exec echo "File is {}" \;

Note that find is recursive so you might want to use -maxdepth 1 to keep find in current working directory. -type f can be used to filter out regular files.

If we're just renaming doc to txt...

The rename command is sed-like in searching. Obviously this won't do anything to convert the format.

rename 's/doc$/txt/' *.doc

Ubuntu – Append text to file names which do not contain a dot

Try this find command,

find . -type f ! -name "*.*" -exec mv {} {}.html \;

It renames the files which doesn't contain dots in their filenames present in the current directory to this filename.htmlformat(added .html at the last).

. --> Represents current directory

-type f --> To do this operation only on files.

! -name "*.*" --> print the name of the files which doesn't have dots in their name.

-exec mv {} {}.html --> find command perform this move(or)rename operation on the extracted filenames.

\; --> Represents the end of find command.

Best Answer

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Using `find`