How can I rename oddly named directories without typing their full names?
I've got 8 folders with very long foldernames and I only got these folders in this path /home/user/Downloads/ - Is there any command to get every {*.txt} file from all folders and move them to another directory?
If I rewrote your question properly based on your comment then
find /home/user/Downloads -type f -name \*.txt -print0 | \
xargs -0 -I '{}' mv '{}' nice-directory
will reliably do what you ask.
xargs -0 mv -t nice-directory, you would save on mv executions.
You could just:
mv firstCoupleLetters[tab] newDir[enter]
and rely on autocomplete to fill out the original directory name, renaming it to something shorter/more useful.
To rename a directory like horrible *[name]* with$weird <characters> \\in it, you can use wildcards. For example, if you have only one directory with weird in the name:
mv "*weird*" a-regular-named-directory
where the " are important. If this fails, you can use
ls --hide-control-chars
That will give you a listing with odd characters replaced by ?, which is then a shell pattern upon which you can use mv.
msw's answer using xargs is OK.
However, I would do
find -exec instead of xargs.mv -t target sources... form instead of mv source target, so you don't need to call mv for each file.find ~/Downloads -type f -name "*.txt" -exec mv -t "/path/to/other_directory" {} +
Alternatively, you can use globstar:
shopt -s globstar
mv ~/Downloads/**/*.txt "/path/to/other_directory"
# Unset globstar again if you don't need it anymore:
shopt -u globstar
