Ubuntu – How to rename (unhide) all files and subdirectories within a directory

batch-renamecommand line

I want to make a script to "unhide" all files and directories inside a certain directory in one go, e.g. ./unhide test.

test/
├── sub1
│   └── .hiddenfile1
└── sub2
    └── .hiddendir
        ├── .hiddendirsub
        ├── .hiddenfile2
        └── not.hidden

Desired outcome:

test/
├── sub1
│   └── hiddenfile1
└── sub2
    └── hiddendir
        ├── hiddendirsub
        ├── hiddenfile2
        └── not.hidden

How can I do that?

I'm still new to this and I've been trying to find a solution using find, but stuck at -exec, and rename (or mv) because I'm still struggling to understand how this combination works. 🙁
So, I'll appreciate if anyone here can give a solution and detailed explanation as well. Thanks.

Best Answer

You can do that with find as follows:

find /path/to/test -depth -name ".*" -execdir rename -n 's|/\.|/|' {} +

This only prints the renaming actions, if it shows what you want remove the -n option.

Explanations

-depth – lets find process from bottom to top, renaming files before their parent directories
-name ".*" – lets find search for files (everything is a file) beginning with a dot – the dot is literal here, as this is not a regular expression
-execdir … + – execute … in the matched file‘s directory
rename 's|/\.|/|' {} – replace the first occurence of “/.” from the matched file’s path (find’s placeholder for which is {}) with “/”, essentially removing the dot from the beginning of the filename
This would be e.g. rename 's|/\.|/|' ./.hiddenfile1 in your case, this would be renamed to ./hiddenfile1.

Example run

$ tree -a
.
├── sub1
│   └── .hiddenfile1
└── sub2
    └── .hiddendir
        ├── .hiddendirsub
        ├── .hiddenfile2
        └── not.hidden

$ find ~/test -depth -name ".*" -execdir rename 's|/\.|/|' {} +
$ tree -a
.
├── sub1
│   └── hiddenfile1
└── sub2
    └── hiddendir
        ├── hiddendirsub
        ├── hiddenfile2
        └── not.hidden

Usage in a script

In a script you can simply use positional parameters instead of the path, it may be relative or absolute – just remember to quote correctly:

#!/bin/bash
find "$1" -depth -name ".*" -execdir rename -n 's|/\.|/|' {} +

How to use

Paste the script below into an empty file, save it as (e.g.) rename_title.py
make it executable (for convenience reasons) chmod u+x rename_title.py

Run it with the directory to rename as argument:

/path/to/rename_title.py <directory/to/rename>

The script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
import shutil

directory = sys.argv[1]

skip = ["a", "an", "the", "and", "but", "or", "nor", "at", "by", "for", "from", "in", "into", "of", "off", "on", "onto", "out", "over", "to", "up", "with", "as"]
replace = [["(", "["], [")", "]"], ["{", "["], ["}", "]"]]
def exclude_words(name):
    for item in skip:
        name = name.replace(" "+item.title()+" ", " "+item.lower()+" ")
    # on request of OP, added a replace option for parethesis etc.
    for item in replace:
        name = name.replace(item[0], item[1])
    return name

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for f in files:
        split = f.find(".")
        if split not in (0, -1):
            name = ("").join((f[:split].lower().title(), f[split:].lower()))
        else:
            name = f.lower().title()
        name = exclude_words(name)
        shutil.move(root+"/"+f, root+"/"+name)
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for dr in dirs:
        name = dr.lower().title()
        name = exclude_words(name)
        shutil.move(root+"/"+dr, root+"/"+name)

Examples:

a file > A File
a fiLE.tXT > A File.txt
A folder > A Folder
a folder > A Folder

And more complex, excluding ["a", "an", "the", "and", "but", "or", "nor", "at", "by", "for", "from", "in", "into", "of", "off", "on", "onto", "out", "over", "to", "up", "with", "as"]:

down BY the rIVER for my uncLE To get water.TXT

becomes:

Down By the River for My Uncle to Get Water.txt

etc, it simply makes all files and folders (recursively) Title Case, extensions lower case.

EDIT: I have added all articles, conjunctions and prepositions that do not need to be capitalized according to the capitalization rules for song titles.

Ubuntu – Bulk rename files

Install renameutils and use qmv with your favorite text editor.

qmv loads all names in your editor and when you save and close it applies your changes to the actual files. If the changes are inconsistent (e.g. two files get the same name) it will abort without touching anything. It also handles circular renames correctly.

I usually do:

$ qmv -f do

so that it shows just one column of names (do: destination-only). Here's how it looks:

qmw

If you combine it with the multiple cursors of SublimeText, Atom or Visual Studio Code, it makes a very nice and powerful tool for bulk renaming. For instance, for Atom, you would do EDITOR="atom -w" qmv -f do.