How would I batch rename a lot of files using command-line?
- by Whisperity
I have a problem which I am unable to solve: I need to rename a great dump of files using patterns. I tried using this, but I always get an error.
I have a folder, inside with a lot of files. Running ls -1 | wc -l, it returns that I have like 160000 files inside. The problem is, that I wish to move these files to a Windows system, but most of them have characters like : and ? in them, which makes the file unaccessible on said Windows-based systems.
(As a "do not solve but deal with" method, I tried booting up a LiveCD on the Windows system and moving the files using the live OS. Under that Ubuntu, the files were readable and writable on the mounted NTFS partition, but when I booted back on Windows, it showed that the file is there but Windows was unable to access it in any fashion: rename, delete or open.)
I tried running rename 's/\:/_' * inside the folder, but I got Argument list too long error. Some search revealed that it happens because I have so many files, and then I arrived here. The problem is that I don't know how to alter the command to suit my needs, as I always end up having various errors like
Trying find -name '*:*' | xargs rename : _, it gives xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option [\n] syntax error at (eval 1) line 1, near ":" [\n] xargs: rename: exited with status 255; aborting
Adding the -0 after xargs turns the error message to xargs: argument line too long
These files are archive files generated by various PHP scripts. The best solution would be having a chance to rename them before they are moved to Windows, but if there is no way to do it, we might have a way to rename the files while they are moved to Windows. I use samba and proftpd to move the files.
Unfortunately, graphical software are out of the question as the server containing the files is what it is, a server, with only command-line interface.
