How to rename multiple files using find

Question

I want to rename multiple files (file1 ... filen to file1_renamed ... filen_renamed) using command find command:

find . -type f -name 'file*' -exec mv filename='{}' $(basename $filename)_renamed ';'

But getting this error:

mv: cannot stat ‘filename=./file1’: No such file or directory

This not working because filename is not interpreted as shell variable.

Answer 1

The following is a direct fix of your approach:

find . -type f -name 'file*' -exec sh -c 'x="{}"; mv "$x" "${x}_renamed"' \;

However, this is very expensive if you have lots of matching files, because you start a fresh shell (that executes a mv) for each match. And if you have funny characters in any file name, this will explode. A more efficient and secure approach is this:

find . -type f -name 'file*' -print0 | xargs --null -I{} mv {} {}_renamed

It also has the benefit of working with strangely named files. If find supports it, this can be reduced to

find . -type f -name 'file*' -exec mv {} {}_renamed \;

The xargs version is useful when not using {}, as in

find .... -print0 | xargs --null rm

Here rm gets called once (or with lots of files several times), but not for every file.

I removed the basename in you question, because it is probably wrong: you would move foo/bar/file8 to file8_renamed, not foo/bar/file8_renamed.

Edits (as suggested in comments):

• Added shortened find without xargs
• Added security sticker

Answer 2

After trying the first answer and toying with it a little I found that it can be done slightly shorter and less complex using -execdir:

find . -type f -name 'file*' -execdir mv {} {}_renamed ';'

Looks like it should also do exactly what you need.

Answer 3

I want to expand on the first answer and note that this won't work to append to the filename since the ./ path prefix is present in the filename argument.

Modifying Thomas Erker answer, I find this one a more generic approach

find . -name PATTERN -printf "%f\0" | xargs --null -I{} mv {} "prefix {} suffix"

xargs options:

--null Indicates that each argument passed through stdin ends with a null character (\0). This way the filename can contain spaces, otherwise each word will be threated as a different parameter for the mv command.

-I replace-str Every ocurrence of replace-str will be replaced with the argument read from stdin. So, you may change it for other string if you need it so.

Answer 4

Another approach is to use a while read loop over find output. This allows access to each file name as a variable that can be manipulated without having to worry about additional cost / potential security issues of spawning a separate sh -c process using find's -exec option.

find . -type f -name 'file*' |
    while IFS= read file_name; do
        mv "$file_name" "${file_name##*\/}_renamed"
    done

And if the shell being used supports the -d option to specify a read delimiter you can support strangely named files (e.g. with a newline) using the following:

find . -type f -name 'file*' -print0 |
    while IFS= read -d '' file_name; do
        mv "$file_name" "${file_name##*\/}_renamed"
    done