Shell – Rename multiple files, sub directories, and insert characters at specific location on OSX

osxrenameshell

I have files and directories starting with "cateory-icon-" in many sub directories. I am trying to rename them recursively to "category-icons-". Please note that I added missing "g" to the category and "s" at the end of icons.

I did look at tons of other questions dealing with renaming multiple files and directories but could not make any of them work for me!

A little bit explanation about the answer would be greatly appreciated.

EDITED: Here is an example of my directory structure:

test/cateory-icon-archery/cateory-icon-archery.png
                          cateory-icon-archery@2x.png

test/cateory-icon-automotive/cateory-icon-automotive.png
                             cateory-icon-automotive@2x.png

Best Answer

Since you need to do this recursively, find is the best tool to use. To alter the name, you can use sh in the -exec call. Here is an example:

find /some/path -name 'cateory-icon' -exec sh -c 'mv "$1" "${1%/*}/category-icon-${1#cateory-icon-*}"' -- {} \;

The ${1#cateory-icon-*} expansion gets the filename after cateory-icon.

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Recursively rename files and directories

With find:

find . -type f -exec sh -c 'SHELL COMMAND' {} \;

This invokes SHELL COMMAND on each found file in turn; the file name is "$0". Thus:

find . -type f -exec sh -c '
    mv "$0" "${0%/*}/$(printf "%s\n" "${0##*/}" | sha1sum | cut -d" " -f1)"
' {} \;

(Note the use of printf rather than echo, in case you have a file called -e or -n or a few other problematic cases that echo mangles.)

You can make this a little faster by invoking the shell in batches.

find . -type f -exec sh -c 'for x; do
      mv "$x" "${x%/*}/$(printf "%s\n" "${x##*/}" | sha1sum | cut -d" " -f1)";
    done' _ {} +

In zsh, there's an easy way to match all the files in the current directory and its subdirectories recursively. The . glob qualifier restricts the matches to regular files, and D includes dot files.

for x in **/*(.D); do mv …; done

In bash ≥4, you can run shopt -s globstar and use **/* to match all files in the current directory and its subdirectories recursively. You'll need to filter regular files in the loop.

shopt -s globstar; GLOBIGNORE=".:.."
for x in **/*; do if [[ -f $x ]]; then mv …; done

Directory Management – How to Rename Multiple Directories

find . -depth -type d -name doc -exec sh -c 'mv "${0}" "${0%/doc}/Doc"' {} \;

Best Answer

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Recursively rename files and directories

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