Rename a file to parent directory's name in terminal

Question

I have to deal with a large number of files nested inside of directories (one file per directory), resembling something like this:

fred/result.txt
john/result.txt
mary/result.txt
...

I am currently using the following command to process each of those files:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) -exec bash -c \"cd '{}' && processResult result.txt\" \;

I am looking for something I can add into the end of this command that will change the filenames to fred.txt, etc. and then later move the file into the parent directory to eliminate the extra layer of directories.

What would be the best way to do this?

Answer 1

We can use the classical approach : find with while read combo:

Demo:

$ ls *
fred:
results.txt

jane:
results.txt

john:
results.txt

$> find . -type f -name "results.txt" -printf "/%P\n" | while read FILE ; do DIR=$(dirname "$FILE" );\                            
>  mv ."$FILE" ."$DIR""$DIR".txt;done                                                                                             
$> ls
fred/  jane/  john/
$> ls *
fred:
fred.txt

jane:
jane.txt

john:
john.txt

Use echo before using mv to test the line with your files.

Minor improvement

We can embed the call to bash into exec , with parameter expansion (specifically prefix removal). Basically it's embedding a script into exec call.

$> find "$PWD" -type f -name "results.txt" -exec bash -c ' DIR=$( dirname "{}"  ); echo "{}" "$DIR"/"${DIR##*/}".txt  ' \;                
/home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/fred/results.txt /home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/fred/fred.txt
/home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/jane/results.txt /home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/jane/jane.txt
/home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/john/results.txt /home/xieerqi/TESTDIR/john/john.txt

To make the command general, (working for any file, not just results.txt) just remove -name "results.txt" part. Also see this post for alternative Python solution to this.

Answer 2

I think this is legit (using the perl-based rename command)

find dir -name 'results.txt' -exec rename -nv -- 's|/(.*)/(.*)$|/$1/$1.txt|' {} +

e.g. given

$ tree dir
dir
├── fred
│   └── results.txt
├── john
│   └── results.txt
└── mary
    └── results.txt

3 directories, 3 files

then

$ find dir -name 'results.txt' -exec rename -v -- 's|/(.*)/(.*)$|/$1/$1.txt|' {} +
dir/fred/results.txt renamed as dir/fred/fred.txt
dir/john/results.txt renamed as dir/john/john.txt
dir/mary/results.txt renamed as dir/mary/mary.txt

resulting in

$ tree dir
dir
├── fred
│   └── fred.txt
├── john
│   └── john.txt
└── mary
    └── mary.txt

3 directories, 3 files

---

If you only need to go 1 level below dir, you may be able to simply do

rename -vn -- 's|/(.*)/(.*)$|/$1/$1.txt|' dir/*/results.txt

As always, the -n option is left in for testing purposes

Answer 3

The small python script below will do exactly as you describe; it will:

• rename any file in given directory, named results.txt, according to its superior directory
• move it one (directory) level up
• delete the (now empty) directory where the file initially was located

The result:

This:

directory
|
├── fred
│   └── results.txt
├── john
│   └── results.txt
└── mary
    └── results.txt

will become:

directory
|
├── fred.txt
│   
├── john.txt
│ 
└── mary.txt

The script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import shutil
import os
import sys

dr = sys.argv[1]

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dr):
    for file in files:
        if file == "results.txt":
            spl = root.split("/"); newname = spl[-1]; sup = ("/").join(spl[:-1])
            shutil.move(root+"/"+file, sup+"/"+newname+".txt"); shutil.rmtree(root)

To use

• Copy the code below into an empty file, save it as move_rename.py

• Run it by the command:

  python3 /path/to/move_rename.py <directory_to_reorganize>
  

Note

as always, first test it on a small sample

Answer 4

Doing it through find seems overly complicated. Why not use a simple for loop?

for folder in *; do
    (cd "$folder" && processResult result.txt)  # This replaces your previous find(1)
    mv "$folder/result.txt" "${folder}.txt"
    rmdir "$folder"
done

Answer 5

If you have multiple files in folders with the same extensions, some of the above commands will overwrite all but one, renaming all files with the same name.

folder1/file1.txt file2.txt --> folder1/folder1.txt

To avoid this, you can use this command or equivalent:

for f in */*.txt ;do fp=$(dirname "$f"); fl=$(basename "$f"); mv "$fp/$fl" "$fp/$fp"_"$fl"; done

By keeping the full filename $fl rather than just the extension, you preserve all the files.

folder1/file1.txt file2.txt --> folder1/folder1_file1.txt folder1_file2.txt