Rename multiple files based on pattern in Unix

Question

There are multiple files in a directory that begin with prefix fgh, for example:

fghfilea
fghfileb
fghfilec

I want to rename a

Answer 1

Using find, xargs and sed:

find . -name "fgh*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} sh -c 'mv "{}" "$(dirname "{}")/`echo $(basename "{}") | sed 's/^fgh/jkl/g'`"'

It's more complex than @nik's solution but it allows to rename files recursively. For instance, the structure,

.
├── fghdir
│   ├── fdhfilea
│   └── fghfilea
├── fghfile\ e
├── fghfilea
├── fghfileb
├── fghfilec
└── other
    ├── fghfile\ e
    ├── fghfilea
    ├── fghfileb
    └── fghfilec

would be transformed to this,

.
├── fghdir
│   ├── fdhfilea
│   └── jklfilea
├── jklfile\ e
├── jklfilea
├── jklfileb
├── jklfilec
└── other
    ├── jklfile\ e
    ├── jklfilea
    ├── jklfileb
    └── jklfilec

The key to make it work with xargs is to invoke the shell from xargs.