How to remove dot from file name

cwajin · 01-28-2011, 09:02 AM

I have an issue with file names i.e. A..png
I want rename these to normal A.png

Files are under directory to directory almost 300+ directories & inside
these dir. files are located. Can anyone tell me how to resolve this.
tried many commands, not working no change

colucix · 01-28-2011, 09:16 AM

You can try the find command to search for files recursively and apply a command using the -exec option, e.g.

Code:

find . -name \*..\* -exec rename "s/\.\././" '{}' +

The syntax of the rename command is that of debian/ubuntu systems, where rename is a perl script. For RedHat like systems the syntax is different, but based on the icon in your post, I assume you're running Ubuntu.

The statement above runs the rename command only once, with all the found files as arguments. If you get an 'argument list too long' error, change it to:

Code:

find . -name \*..\* -exec rename "s/\.\././" '{}' \;

that will run a rename command on one file at a time. Please, first try the rename command on a single file (without the find statement) to be sure it is the correct syntax for your system:

Code:

rename "s/\.\././" A..png

theNbomr · 01-28-2011, 09:20 AM

Generically, you use mv to rename files (move source filename to destination filename). To find all of the files of interest, you can use find. Algorithmically, you can change all instances of '..' to '.' in filenames. Putting all of that together into a bash script:

Code:

#! /bin/bash

for SOURCEFILE in $(find . -type f -name "*..png"); do
    DESTFILE=${SOURCFILE//../.}
    echo mv $SOURCEFILE $DESTFILE
done

Try this out, running from the top level directory containing the files you want to rename. When you are satisfied that it does what you want, remove the echo from the last command in the loop, and then re-run it to do the actual renaming.

--- rod.