Find and replace filename recursively in a directory

Question

I want to rename all the files in a folder which starts with 123_xxx.txt to xxx.txt.

For example, my directory has:

123_xxx         


        

Answer 1

Tried the answer above but it didn't work for me cause i had the string inside folders and files name at the same time so here is what i did the following bash script:

  for fileType in d f
  do
    find  -type $fileType -iname "stringToSearch*" |while read file
    do
      mv $file $( sed -r "s/stringToSearch/stringToReplaceWith/" <<< $file )
    done
  done

First i began by replacing inside folders name then inside files name.

Answer 2

To expand on Sorpigal's answer, if you want to replace the 123_ with hello_, you could use

    find . -name '123*.txt' -type f -exec bash -c 'mv "$1" "${1/\/123_/\/hello_}"' -- {} \;

Answer 3

A slight variation on Kent's that doesn't require gawk and is a little bit more readable, (although, thats debatable..)

find . -name "123*" | awk '{a=$1; gsub(/123_/,""); printf "mv \"%s\" \"%s\"\n", a, $1}' | sh

Answer 4

If the names are fixed you can visit each directory and perform the renaming in a subshell (to avoid changing the current directory) fairly simply. This is how I renamed a bunch of new_paths.json files each to paths.json:

for file in $(find root_directory -name new_paths.json)
  do
     (cd $(dirname $file) ; mv new_paths.json paths.json)
  done

Answer 5

you could check 'rename' tool

for example

rename 's/^123_//' *.txt

or (gawk is needed)

find . -name '123_*.txt'|awk '{print "mv "$0" "gensub(/\/123_(.*\.txt)$/,"/\\1","g");}'|sh

test:

kent$  tree
.
|-- 123_a.txt
|-- 123_b.txt
|-- 123_c.txt
|-- 123_d.txt
|-- 123_e.txt
`-- u
    |-- 123_a.txt
    |-- 123_b.txt
    |-- 123_c.txt
    |-- 123_d.txt
    `-- 123_e.txt

1 directory, 10 files

kent$  find . -name '123_*.txt'|awk '{print "mv "$0" "gensub(/\/123_(.*\.txt)$/,"/\\1","g");}'|sh

kent$  tree
.
|-- a.txt
|-- b.txt
|-- c.txt
|-- d.txt
|-- e.txt
`-- u
    |-- a.txt
    |-- b.txt
    |-- c.txt
    |-- d.txt
    `-- e.txt

1 directory, 10 files

Answer 6

Provided you don't have newlines in your filenames:

find -name '123_*.txt' | while IFS= read -r file; do mv "$file" "${file#123_}"; done

For a really safe way, provided your find supports the -print0 flag (GNU find does):

find -name '123_*.txt' -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do mv "$file" "${file#123_}"; done