I have a collection of files that were created on a different system that I need to make use of. Unfortunately, some of the file and directory names contain "\ " (backslash, space).

How can I rename all the files and directories, recursively, from the backslash, space to an underscore?

...and since I'm asking about bulk file handling...

The files I have are compressed (ZIP, LHA, etc.). Is there an easy way to recursively unpack all the files to a different location, keeping the directory structure?

What is the different system? Windows, MacOS etc. Is the forward slash actually in the name or with Windows just the directory character? With Windows and MacOS a forward slash is an illegal character for a filename as far as I know.

Where and how the files are extracted depends on what utility is used (unzip, 7z etc). Check out the options for extracting everything to the same directory. The unzip utility will automatically create the directory structure so no name conversion is required if that is how the files are extracted.

The other system is an Amiga runinning AmigaOS 3.2.

The backslash is actually in the file name. I think that's how an Amiga escapes spaces in file names. I'm not aware of any other characters that need escaping on the Amiga.

The files are zipped and lzx compressed, and I have uncompressors for these installed on my Ubuntu system.

This is how the files are stored...
...and how I would like the result to look...

Either of the two versions of rename can do the job. The Perl version is more capable but with such a basic task, either will do.

Just keep in mind that the backslash is an escape character and will itself have to be escaped. Here is a defanged example:

The Perl version will take any Perl expression, but the above is a basic search and replace s/// command. You could use tr/// just as well for that task. See "man rename" and for an excessively deep dive see "man perlre" The Bash reference manual will cover globstar, see "man bash" and search for that string under the section on shopt, however although it is an imposing reference manual it is worth learning to navigate.

Are files individually zipped and then archived in a single file with path information?

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I end up with and "Argument list too long" error. There are a LOT of files in these directories (300,000 files in 23,000 directories). I should be able to work something out though with that expression you provided.

I had not heard of shopt before. Interesting.

No... there is a directory tree with zip files throughout. I want to keep the tree and expand the compressed files in their location on the tree.

Then you need to use the find command.

Wouldn't a simple "for fle in **; ... " suffice (with globstar active of course) ?.
The unpacking could be done as a later step.

Are you sure there is backslash-space and not just a space?
The GNU ls might show an extra backslash, unless you do
ls --literal
or
ls --quoting-style=literal

The suggested prename changes both backslash and space:
a "\ " becomes "__"

A for loop can take many more but not endless arguments.
find has no limit.
-n is "no action". Remove it for real action.