How to replace spaces in file names using a bash script

I use:

for f in *\ *; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done 

Though it's not recursive, it's quite fast and simple. I'm sure someone here could update it to be recursive.

The ${f// /_} part utilizes bash's parameter expansion mechanism to replace a pattern within a parameter with supplied string. The relevant syntax is ${parameter/pattern/string}. See: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Shell-Parameter-Expansion.html or http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/pe .

find . -depth -name '* *' \ | while IFS= read -r f ; do mv -i "$f" "$(dirname "$f")/$(basename "$f"|tr ' ' _)" ; done 

failed to get it right at first, because I didn't think of directories.

you can use detox by Doug Harple

detox -r <folder> 

A find/rename solution. rename is part of util-linux.

You need to descend depth first, because a whitespace filename can be part of a whitespace directory:

find /tmp/ -depth -name "* *" -execdir rename " " "_" "{}" ";" 

you can use this:

find . -depth -name '* *' | while read fname do new_fname=`echo $fname | tr " " "_"` if [ -e $new_fname ] then echo "File $new_fname already exists. Not replacing $fname" else echo "Creating new file $new_fname to replace $fname" mv "$fname" $new_fname fi done 

bash 4.0

#!/bin/bash shopt -s globstar for file in **/*\ * do mv "$file" "${file// /_}" done 

Recursive version of Naidim's Answers.

find . -name "* *" | awk '{ print length, $0 }' | sort -nr -s | cut -d" " -f2- | while read f; do base=$(basename "$f"); newbase="${base// /_}"; mv "$(dirname "$f")/$(basename "$f")" "$(dirname "$f")/$newbase"; done 

In macOS

Just like the chosen answer.

brew install rename # cd <your dir> find . -name "* *" -type d | rename 's/ /_/g' # do the directories first find . -name "* *" -type f | rename 's/ /_/g' 

For those struggling through this using macOS, first install all the tools:

 brew install tree findutils rename 

Then when needed to rename, make an alias for GNU find (gfind) as find. Then run the code of @Michel Krelin:

alias find=gfind find . -depth -name '* *' \ | while IFS= read -r f ; do mv -i "$f" "$(dirname "$f")/$(basename "$f"|tr ' ' _)" ; done 

An easy alternative to recursive version is to increase the range of for loop step by step(n times for n sub-levels irrespective of number of sub-directories at each level). i.e from the outermost directory run these.

for f in *; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done for f in */*; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done for f in */*/*; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done 

To check/understand what's being done, run the following before and after the above steps.

for f in *;do echo $f;done for f in */*;do echo $f;done for f in */*/*;do echo $f;done 

Here's a (quite verbose) find -exec solution which writes "file already exists" warnings to stderr:

function trspace() { declare dir name bname dname newname replace_char [ $# -lt 1 -o $# -gt 2 ] && { echo "usage: trspace dir char"; return 1; } dir="${1}" replace_char="${2:-_}" find "${dir}" -xdev -depth -name $'*[ \t\r\n\v\f]*' -exec bash -c ' for ((i=1; i<=$#; i++)); do name="${@:i:1}" dname="${name%/*}" bname="${name##*/}" newname="${dname}/${bname//[[:space:]]/${0}}" if [[ -e "${newname}" ]]; then echo "Warning: file already exists: ${newname}" 1>&2 else mv "${name}" "${newname}" fi done ' "${replace_char}" '{}' + } trspace rootdir _ 

This one does a little bit more. I use it to rename my downloaded torrents (no special characters (non-ASCII), spaces, multiple dots, etc.).

#!/usr/bin/perl &rena(`find . -type d`); &rena(`find . -type f`); sub rena { ($elems)=@_; @t=split /\n/,$elems; for $e (@t) { $_=$e; # remove ./ of find s/^\.\///; # non ascii transliterate tr [\200-\377][_]; tr [\000-\40][_]; # special characters we do not want in paths s/[ \-\,\;\?\+\'\"\!\[\]\(\)\@\#]/_/g; # multiple dots except for extension while (/\..*\./) { s/\./_/; } # only one _ consecutive s/_+/_/g; next if ($_ eq $e ) or ("./$_" eq $e); print "$e -> $_\n"; rename ($e,$_); } } 

I found around this script, it may be interesting :)

 IFS=$'\n';for f in `find .`; do file=$(echo $f | tr [:blank:] '_'); [ -e $f ] && [ ! -e $file ] && mv "$f" $file;done;unset IFS 

Here's a reasonably sized bash script solution

#!/bin/bash ( IFS=$'\n' for y in $(ls $1) do mv $1/`echo $y | sed 's/ /\\ /g'` $1/`echo "$y" | sed 's/ /_/g'` done ) 

This only finds files inside the current directory and renames them. I have this aliased.

find ./ -name "* *" -type f -d 1 | perl -ple '$file = $_; $file =~ s/\s+/_/g; rename($_, $file);

I just make one for my own purpose. You may can use it as reference.

#!/bin/bash cd /vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8 for file in * do echo $file cd "/vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8/$file/Configuration/$file" echo "==> `pwd`" for subfile in *\ *; do [ -d "$subfile" ] && ( mv "$subfile" "$(echo $subfile | sed -e 's/ /_/g')" ); done ls cd /vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8 done 

For files in folder named /files

for i in `IFS="";find /files -name *\ *` do echo $i done > /tmp/list while read line do mv "$line" `echo $line | sed 's/ /_/g'` done < /tmp/list rm /tmp/list 

My solution to the problem is a bash script:

#!/bin/bash directory=$1 cd "$directory" while [ "$(find ./ -regex '.* .*' | wc -l)" -gt 0 ]; do filename="$(find ./ -regex '.* .*' | head -n 1)" mv "$filename" "$(echo "$filename" | sed 's|'" "'|_|g')" done 

just put the directory name, on which you want to apply the script, as an argument after executing the script.

Use below command to replace space with underscore in filename as well as directory name.

find -name "* *" -print0 | sort -rz | \ while read -d $'\0' f; do mv -v "$f" "$(dirname "$f")/$(basename "${f// /_}")"; done 

If you need to rename only files in one directory by replacing all spaces. Then you can use this command with rename.ul:

for i in *' '*; do rename.ul ' ' '_' *; done

Actually, there's no need to use rename script in perl:

find . -depth -name "* *" -execdir bash -c 'mv "$1" `echo $1 | sed s/ /_/g`' -- {} \; 

use fd and rename fd find all files recursively, then use rename to replace space with _

fd -X rename 's/ /_/g' {}