Rename all files with the same extension and any name

Question

I need to rename all files with .js extension, but names of files can vary, for example:

rootDirectory
--firstDirectory
----first.js
--secondFileDirectory
----second.js
--thirdDirectory
----third.js

Needs to be renamed to

rootDirectory
--firstDirectory
----newName.js
--secondFileDirectory
----newName.js
--thirdDirectory
----newName.js

Is there a way to do it?

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04

Answer 1

Ububtu 14 has a version of find that has the -execdir option, so this becomes relatively simple:

find . -name '*.js' -execdir mv -i {} newName.js \;

For example, I have this tree:

./A
./A/first.js
./B
./B/second.js

I run the command

$ find . -name '*.js' -execdir mv -i {} newName.js \;

The resulting tree:

./A
./A/newName.js
./B
./B/newName.js

Answer 2

Based on Perl rename, assumes pwd is rootDirectory:

rename 's|(.*/).*\.js|$1newName.js|' */*

or

rename 's|.*/\K.*\.js|newName.js|' */*

• use rename -n if you want to check how the renaming will happen