CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Leia
Leia

Reputation: 43

Bash: Find directories with trailing spaces at the end of each name

I am a complete newbie to Linux (I am using Linux Mint) and I need your help understanding basic bash commands.

I store my files on an external hard drive (NTFS formatting) that I use in different OS. My files are organized in many directories (folders) and inside each primary directory I have more folders and inside those folders I have other folders and so on. I need a bash command to find all the directories with trailing spaces at the end of each name. If possible, I would also like to use a bash command to remove the blank space(s). I have tried looking into other answers but I only find the commands and no clear explanation of what they do, so I am not sure whether that is what I am looking for and I don’t want to risk changing something inadvertently. Any help explaining which commands to use would be greatly appreciated!

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2813

Answers (2)

Malan
Malan

Reputation: 338

find . -name "* " -type d

. searches current directory and subdirectories.

-name searches for filenames that match (asterisk means match zero more characters, the literal space matches a space at the end of the filename)

-type d searches for items of type directory.

Upvotes: 3

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295279

The following is written to be easy-to-follow (as a secondary goal), and correct in corner cases (as a primary goal):

# because "find"'s usage is dense, we're defining that command in an array, so each
# ...element of that array can have its usage described.
find_cmd=(
  find                 # run the tool 'find'
  .                    # searching from the current directory
  -depth               # depth-first traversal so we don't invalidate our own renames
  -type d              # including only directories in results
  -name '*[[:space:]]' # and filtering *those* for ones that end in spaces
  -print0              # ...delimiting output with NUL characters
)

shopt -s extglob                            # turn on extended glob syntax
while IFS= read -r -d '' source_name; do    # read NUL-separated values to source_name
  dest_name=${source_name%%+([[:space:]])}  # trim trailing whitespace from name
  mv -- "$source_name" "$dest_name"         # rename source_name to dest_name
done < <("${find_cmd[@]}")                  # w/ input from the find command defined above

See also:

  • BashFAQ #1, describing the while read loop's syntax in general, and the purposes of the specific amendments (IFS=, read -r, etc) above.
  • BashFAQ #100, describing how to do string manipulation in bash (particularly including the ${var%suffix} syntax, known as "parameter expansion", used to trim a suffix from a value above).
  • Using Find, providing a general introduction both to the use of find and its integration with bash.

Upvotes: 9

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