CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashubuntu
Code_Ed_Student
Code_Ed_Student

Reputation: 1190

Replace white space with underscore and make lower case - file name

I am renaming files and directories. Basically, all I want to do is strip out spaces and replace them with underscores and finally make lower case. I could do one command at a time: $ rename "s/ /_/g" * , then the lower case command. But I am trying to accomplish this all in one line. Below all I am able to accomplish is strip out the spaces and replace with _ but it doesn’t make lower case. How come?

find /temp/ -depth -name "* *" -execdir rename 's/ /_/g; s,,?; ‘

Original file name:

test FILE   .txt

Result: (If there is a space at the end, take out)

test_file.txt

Upvotes: 5

Views: 4148

Answers (3)

Giacomo1968
Giacomo1968

Reputation: 26066

While the original question mentions using rename explicitly, I am using macOS which does not have rename installed by default.

So instead I created this find script that uses the one-liner that Kristijan Iliev posted previously in their 2014 answer. It uses tr and sed so it is more portable across different Linux-like operating systems.

This simple script will rename relevant filenames in the current working directory; change the . to match a file path if desired.

find . -depth -name "* *" -type f |\
  while read source_filepath
  do
    destination_filepath=$(echo "${source_filepath}" | tr A-Z a-z | tr -s ' ' | tr ' ' '_'| sed 's/_\./\./');
    mv -f "${source_filepath}" "${destination_filepath}";
  done

Upvotes: 0

Kristijan Iliev
Kristijan Iliev

Reputation: 4987

Try this line:

echo "test FILE  .txt" | tr A-Z a-z | tr -s ' ' | tr ' ' '_'| sed 's/_\./\./'

Upvotes: 1

John1024
John1024

Reputation: 113834

rename 's/ +\././; y/A-Z /a-z_/'

Or, combined with find:

find /temp/ -depth -name "* *" -exec rename 's/ +\././; y/A-Z /a-z_/' {} +

To target only files, not directories, add -type f:

find /temp/ -depth -name "* *" -type f -exec rename 's/ +\././; y/A-Z /a-z_/' {} +

Shortening the names

Would it be possible to rename the file with the last three characters of the original file for example from big Dog.txt to dog.txt?

Yes. Use this rename command:

rename 's/ +\././; y/A-Z /a-z_/; s/[^.]*([^.]{3})/$1/'

Upvotes: 5

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