How to correctly extract various parts of `dirname` when combined with `find`?

You can use the split+glob operator:

find . -name '*.zip' -exec sh -c ' IFS=/ # split on / set -f # disable glob for file do set -- $file # invoke split+glob, store in positional parameters # now the path components are in $1, $2... mv -i -- "$file" "someString_${2}_${4}+${6}" done' sh {} + 

$1 would have ., $2 DE_AT and so on. To get the last argument, it becomes tricky, as you need something like:

eval "last=\${$#}" 

It may be easier to use a different shell like zsh which has proper split operators and arrays for that:

find . -name '*.zip' -exec zsh -c ' for file do components=(${(s:/:)file}) printf "Last component: %s\n" $components[-1] mv -i -- "$file" "someString_$components[2]_$components[-3]+$components[-1]" done' zsh {} + 

With zsh, you can also use its zmv batch-renaming tool:

autoload zmv # best in ~/.zshrc zmv -n '([^/]#)/**/(*)/*/(*.zip)' 'someString_${1}_${2}+$3' 

The **/ part matches any level (including 0) of subdirectories, so it will match on (a)/b/c/(d)/e/(f.zip) or (a)/(b)/c/(d.zip) with the captured strings (a/d/f.zip, a/b/d.zip) going in $1/$2/$3 for the replacement so as to get a similar behaviour as for the $components array approach above.

The [^/]# part where # is like the regexp * operator, matches any sequence of non-/. For globs, * works the same as * cannot go across a /, but after expanding the glob, zmv uses pattern matching on the resulting files to extract the parts for the replacement, and there, * would go a across a / so (*) in place of ([^/]#) would match too much.