CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashfindexec
noway
noway

Reputation: 2585

Find and rename a directory

I am trying to find and rename a directory on a linux system.

the folder name is something like : thefoldername-23423-431321

thefoldername is consistent but the numbers change every time.

I tried this:

find . -type d -name 'thefoldername*' -exec mv {} newfoldername \;

The command actually works and rename that directory. But I got an error on terminal saying that there is no such file or directory.

How can I fix it?

Upvotes: 14

Views: 18502

Answers (5)

Swapnilkumar Rane
Swapnilkumar Rane

Reputation: 9

Replace 1100 with old_value and 2200 with new_value that you want to replace.

example 

for i in $(find . -type d -iname '1100');do echo "mv "$i" "$i"__" >> test.txt; sed 's/1100__/2200/g' test.txt > test_1.txt; bash test_1.txt ; rm test*.txt ; done

Proof

[user@server test]$ ls -la check/

drwxr-xr-x. 1 user user 0 Jun 7 12:16 1100

[user@server test]$ for i in $(find . -type d -iname '1100');do echo "mv "$i" "$i"__" >> test.txt; sed 's/1100__/2200/g' test.txt > test_1.txt; bash test_1.txt ; rm test*.txt ; done

[user@server test]$ ls -la check/

drwxr-xr-x. 1 user user 0 Jun 7 12:16 2200

here __ in sed is used only to change the name it have no other significance

Upvotes: -1

Jae-sung Park
Jae-sung Park

Reputation: 1

.../ABC -> .../BCD

find . -depth -type d -name 'ABC' -execdir mv {} $(dirname $i)/BCD \;

Upvotes: -1

Amadeu Barbosa
Amadeu Barbosa

Reputation: 344

It's missing the -execdir option! As stated in man pages of find:

-execdir command {};

Like -exec, but the specified command is run from the subdirectory containing the matched file, which is not normally the directory in which you started find.

find . -depth -type d -name 'thefoldername*' -execdir mv {} newfoldername \;

Upvotes: 7

Vilmos Kiss
Vilmos Kiss

Reputation: 39

With the previous answer my folders contents are disappeared.
This is my solution. It works well: for i in find -type d -name 'oldFolderName'; do dirname=$(dirname "$i") mv $dirname/oldFolderName $dirname/newFolderName done

Upvotes: 1

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361585

It's a harmless error which you can get rid of with the -depth option.

find . -depth -type d -name 'thefoldername*' -exec mv {} newfoldername \;

Find's normal behavior is to process directories and then recurse into them. Since you've renamed it find complains when it tries to recurse. The -depth option tells find to recurse first, then process the directory after.

Upvotes: 23

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