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So I asked this question on how to find a directory that contains a specific character.

Now I'd like to change that character to something else (not the whole name just that one character)

Example: 

find "a"
     aaa 
     bab
replace with "c"
     ccc
     bcb

How do I do that?

This is the code I have atm

read -p "find what character: " findwhat
find . -name "*$findwhat*" -type d -print
phuclv
  • 27,773
Devid Demetz
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1 Answers1

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One approach would be to use rename (aka prename). To replace _ with -:

rename 's/_/-/g' dirname

(the g replaces all occurrences. Omit it if you only want to replace one occurrence)

Combining this with your find statement:

find . -name "*$findwhat*" -type d -execdir rename "s/$findwhat/$replacewith/g" {} \;

You might need to modify this to get the variable substitution to work correctly.

Note: The {} tells -execdir/-exec where to insert the filename in the command; the ; tells it where the commands ends - and you need to escape it with \ because otherwise the shell will treat it as a command separator.

Joe P
  • 471
  • thanks it works. but why do i need that {} and backslash? – Devid Demetz Jun 11 '17 at 15:53
  • The {} tells -execdir/-exec where to insert the filename in the command; the ; tells it where the commands ends - and you need to escape it with \ because otherwise the shell will treat it as a command separator. – Joe P Jun 11 '17 at 15:56
  • Added it to the answer :) – Joe P Jun 11 '17 at 17:00