LinuxQuestions.org - Converting Uppercase to Lowercase

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- - Converting Uppercase to Lowercase (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/converting-uppercase-to-lowercase-123398/)

Converting Uppercase to Lowercase

Hey all :-)

I've got a whole bunch of files that i want to convert to lower case, when I started scripting in Linux I read the Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial and use the script that I made from there to rename uppercase filenames to lowercase.

The question I have is how would you go about changing the filenames if they have spaces or are directories? The script that is in the tutorial works but not for these files....

So you have a set of files and directories that may or may not be in capital letters, and may or may not contain spaces. You want the capital letters converted to lowercase letters, and the spaces removed entirely?

Just making sure I am understanding you correctly.

Almost, basically I want an unconditional change from uppercase to lowercase, no matter about spacing or if it's a folder.....

:)

Oh. So, folders receive the case conversion as well as the files. I figured that. Not sure what you mean by spacing though.

Basically if there's a file called "I'm back" I need "i'm back"

Here's an example of it working...

Code:

[frozen@Fr0ZeN scripts]$ ls test

file space  lowercasefile  n FILE sPAcE  normaldir/  UppER SpAcES DIR/  with spaces dir/

[frozen@Fr0ZeN scripts]$ ./utol test

[frozen@Fr0ZeN scripts]$ ls test

file space  lowercasefile  n file space  normaldir/  upper spaces dir/  with spaces dir/

Finally, here's the code:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

#

# Rename all files and directories within a directory to have lowercase letters

# + skips over files that lack upper case letters

# - non recursive, possibly just add "-R" to 'ls'

#

# (c) 2003 Kyle Gibson, free for non-commercial use

# may be redistributed provided this header is left

# in tact. Feel free to modify.

#

# License: GPL

##################################



usage()

{

        echo "Usage: $0 [directory]"

        exit 1;

}



test -d "$1" || usage



DIR="$1"



ls "$DIR" | grep -e "[A-Z]" | \

while read file; do

        N=`echo -n "$file" | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]"`

        mv "$DIR/$file" "$DIR/$N"

done

Sorry to bump such an old thread. Just goes to show what kind info you can locate on LQ with the search function!

I'm hunting a solution for converting files to lowercase and a friend pointed me to this URL.

Source: ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/unix/ts/namedown

Code:



#!/bin/sh

#

# To make this Bourne shell script operative apply once:

#  chmod 700 namedown

#  rehash



# Alter the general path for BSD vs. Sys V compatibility

#

if [ -d /usr/ucb ] ; then

  PATH=/usr/ucb:$PATH ; export PATH

fi



case $# in



  0)

    echo

    echo "====================================================="

    echo "namedown, Convert file names to lower case and ; to ."

    echo "By Hannu Hirvonen and Timo Salmi Sun 18-Mar-2001"

    echo "http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/ and http://www.uwasa.fi/~hh/"

    echo "====================================================="

    echo

    echo "Usage: namedown [FILENAME(S)]"

    echo

    echo "Converts file names only.  Directory names are not affected"

    echo

    ;;



  *)

    for oldname in $*

    do

      newfile=`basename ${oldname} | tr '[A-Z;]' '[a-z.]'`

      dirname=`dirname ${oldname}`

      newname="${dirname}/${newfile}"

      oldname="${dirname}/`basename ${oldname}`"

#Don't convert a file into itself

      if [ "${newname}" = "${oldname}" ]; then

        echo > /dev/null

#Don't convert directory names

      elif [ -d "${oldname}" ]; then

        echo > /dev/null

#Don't convert if the file does not exist

      elif [ ! -f "${oldname}" ]; then

        echo > /dev/null

#Don't overwrite existing files

      elif [ -f "${newname}" ]; then

        echo "${oldname} not converted, file ${newname} already exists" 2>&1

#Don't move to subdirectories if they happen to exist

      elif [ -d "${newname}" ]; then

        echo "${oldname} not converted, directory ${newname} already exists" 2>&1

#Do it

      else

        mv "${oldname}" "${newname:-${oldname}}"

        echo "File ${oldname} converted to file ${newname:-${oldname}}"

      fi

  done

    ;;

esac

With this script it doesn't seem to convert filenames with spaces in them.

Kyle's script doesn't protect against overwriting lowercase versions of the file if one exists already.

But both are pretty cool scripts especially when not having a mastery of shell scripting to create one!