Find files with spaces in the bash

Question

I want to search for files in a folder which have a space in its filenames, f.e.

/vol1/apache2/application/current/Test 1.pdf /vol1/apache2/application/current/Test 2.pdf

I know there's a find command but I can't figure out the correct parameters to list all those files.

Sorry I forgot to say: I need the file list for a given folder and all subfolders (recursive search)... — altralaser
– altralaser, Commented May 18, 2017 at 14:52

Rakesh Gupta · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-18 17:53:18Z

29

Use find command with a space between two wildcards. It will match files with single or multiple spaces. "find ." will find all files in current folder and all the sub-folders. "-type f" will only look for files and not folders.

find . -type f -name "* *"

EDIT

To replace the spaces with underscores, try this

find . -type f -name "* *" | while read file; do mv "$file" ${file// /_}; done

edited May 18, 2017 at 17:53

answered May 18, 2017 at 14:56

Rakesh Gupta

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5 Comments

altralaser Over a year ago

And is there also a possibility to rename the results and automatically remove the spaces?

beliy Over a year ago

I think better use xargs than while in this case.

s.ouchène Over a year ago

This will fail if one parent directory contains spaces in its name

ssavva05 Over a year ago

This is good when parent dir doesn't have spaces

ssavva05 Over a year ago

This is a nice approach. First rename the files and then do the operations

beliy · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-18 14:55:21Z

10

With find:

find "/vol1/apache2/application/current" -type f -name "*[[:space:]]*"

answered May 18, 2017 at 14:55

beliy

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2 Comments

ssavva05 Over a year ago

Nice! Can I add more characters or exclude filename extensions?

beliy Over a year ago

@ssavva05 yeap Examples: add characters - find "/vol1/apache2/application/current" -type f -name "*Test[[:space:]]*.pdf" exclude extensions - find "/vol1/apache2/application/current" -type f -name "*[[:space:]]*" -not -name "*.txt"

Liran H · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-18 14:36:25Z

The following worked for me to find all files containing spaces:

find ./ -type f | grep " "

To also rename all found files to the same filename without the spaces, run the following:

find ./ -type f | grep " " | while read file; do mv "$file" ${file// }; done

Ways to configure the above script:

To rename only directories, change -type f to -type d
To use git-aware rename, change do mv to do git mv
To rename differently, change ${file// }; to ${file// /[some-string]};. For example, to replace the spaces with "_", use: ${file// /_}; (notice the leading "/")

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