I am having files like a_dbg.txt, b_dbg.txt ...
in a Suse 10
system. I want to write a bash shell script which should rename these files by removing "_dbg" from them.
Google suggested me to use rename
command. So I executed the command rename _dbg.txt .txt *dbg*
on the CURRENT_FOLDER
My actual CURRENT_FOLDER
contains the below files.
CURRENT_FOLDER/a_dbg.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/b_dbg.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/XX/c_dbg.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/YY/d_dbg.txt
After executing the rename
command,
CURRENT_FOLDER/a.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/b.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/XX/c_dbg.txt
CURRENT_FOLDER/YY/d_dbg.txt
Its not doing recursively, how to make this command to rename files in all subdirectories. Like XX
and YY
I will be having so many subdirectories which name is unpredictable. And also my CURRENT_FOLDER
will be having some other files also.
You can use find
to find all matching files recursively:
find . -iname "*dbg*" -exec rename _dbg.txt .txt '{}' \;
EDIT: what the '{}'
and \;
are?
The -exec
argument makes find execute rename
for every matching file found. '{}'
will be replaced with the path name of the file. The last token, \;
is there only to mark the end of the exec expression.
All that is described nicely in the man page for find:
-exec utility [argument ...] ;
True if the program named utility returns a zero value as its
exit status. Optional arguments may be passed to the utility.
The expression must be terminated by a semicolon (``;''). If you
invoke find from a shell you may need to quote the semicolon if
the shell would otherwise treat it as a control operator. If the
string ``{}'' appears anywhere in the utility name or the argu-
ments it is replaced by the pathname of the current file.
Utility will be executed from the directory from which find was
executed. Utility and arguments are not subject to the further
expansion of shell patterns and constructs.