Directory and Subdirectory Rename command special characters in filenames

Question

I would like to remove []-_" etc. from multiple file names that are situated in different subdirectories.

Found this

rename "s/\[|\]/_/g" * 

but it's working only in a specific subdirectory and not for other files that are elsewhere

Is there way to do this?

Answer 1

If you want to apply the renaming recursively to all files within the directory hierarchy under your current working directory, you can use Bash's globstar feature. You need to activate this first. Type the following:

shopt -s globstar
rename "s/\[|\]/_/g" **

In other words, you just to activate the globstar feature, then you can run your command with two stars (**) instead of only one (*). This will match all files in the directory hierarchy under the current working directory, i.e., regardless of how deeply they are nested under the current working directory.

If you only want to rename all files under the current working directory without the risk of renaming matching directory names too, you can use find instead:

find . -type f -execdir rename -- 's/\[|\]/_/g' {} +

This will match all files containing the characters [ or ] anywhere in the directory structure under your current working directory, then run your renaming routine on the subdirectories containing any matching files.