recursive rename of folders

BreezyBadger · 06-14-2012, 05:24 PM

After using shred on a directory tree I am left with a structure of empty folders and subfolders. I'd like to rename the directories to something meaningless before deleting them, by replacing every character of the original name with a string (for instance 'app'). I've tried a few scripts found online but did not succeed in achieving the hoped-for result. I want to know what command or bash script to use in order to do that. Thanks.

Kustom42 · 06-14-2012, 05:26 PM

You could do a find with an xargs but if you give some more detailed info with examples of what you are trying to do we can give you more specific examples of the code to write.

BreezyBadger · 06-14-2012, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kustom42

You could do a find with an xargs but if you give some more detailed info with examples of what you are trying to do we can give you more specific examples of the code to write.

For example, if I have a structure of folders like dir1>dir2>dir3, I would like to rename it to look like this: appappappapp>appappappapp>appappappapp

I have tried some commands like:

Code:

find . -depth -name "*[a-zA-Z0-9]*" -exec bash -c 'dir=${1%/*} base=${1##*/}; mv "$1" "$dir/${base//app/ }"' _ {} \;

Code:

find /path/to/folder -print0 | xargs -0 mv [a-zA-Z0-9] app

and also the script from http://slash4.de/tutorials/Linux_ren...ders_recursive, but did not get the desired result. Perhaps my syntax is wrong.

chrism01 · 06-14-2012, 06:08 PM

It looks like you are trying to do the equivalent of shredding the dirs themselves....
Given that dir entries in *nix ARE files, why not just use shred; much simpler?