mjhjmtu

I have hundreds of sub directories in a directory that all have hidden files in them that I need to remove the period at the beginning of them to make them visible. I found a command to go into each directory and change them to make them visible but I need to know how to make this command work from one directory up.

rename 's/.//;' .*

I have tried about an hour to modify this to work one level up but don't understand the perl string enough to do it. If someone could help out I am sure it's simple and I just can't land on the right answer.

With GNU find:

find /some/path -type f -name '.*' -execdir sh -c 'mv -i "$0" "./$0#./."' ;

With Perl rename:

find /some/path -type f -name '.*' -exec prename -i -n 's!.*/K.!!' +

(remove -n when you're happy with the results).

this is the line that fixed it all finally found the answer

find -mindepth 1 -depth -exec rename -n 's/.([^/]*$)/$1' +

Just use find together with a simple shell script for doing the renaming and checking that no existing file is overwritten:

find . -type f -name '.*' 
 -execdir sh -c '[ ! -e "$1#." ] && mv "$1" "$1#."' sh ';'

The -execdir option will execute its argument inside the parent directory of the found name, and will be the base name (name without path) of the found name. This option is a widely implemented extension to standard find.

The sh -c script will simply make sure that the desired name is not already taken, and then it will rename the file.

The $1#. parameter substitution will take the value of $1 (the first command line argument of the sh -c script, which is a filename) and remove the initial dot.

This will do what you want:

find . -iname ".*" -exec realpath ; | rename -n 's/.(.*)/$1/'

File structure:

.
├── game
│   ├── .keie
│   ├── .kjae
│   ├── .ndhe
│   └── shame
│   ├── .alwo
│   ├── .asdjd
│   └── .kajd
├── .jsdsd
├── .lewe
└── .skdsd

Test run:

rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/.lewe, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/lewe)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/.jsdsd, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/jsdsd)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/.asdjd, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/asdjd)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/.kajd, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/kajd)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/.alwo, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/shame/alwo)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/.ndhe, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/ndhe)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/.keie, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/keie)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/.kjae, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/game/kjae)
rename(/home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/.skdsd, /home/george/Documents/askubuntu/rename/down/skdsd)

Results:

.
├── game
│   ├── keie
│   ├── kjae
│   ├── ndhe
│   └── shame
│   ├── alwo
│   ├── asdjd
│   └── kajd
├── jsdsd
├── lewe
└── skdsd

Information:

realpath : get the real path to file of interest

-n: used to test run, remove when you're ready to rename the files.

find . -type f -name .* -exec rename -n 's/.//;' +

rename doesn't have a recursive option. If you want to rename the files in the current directory and all its subdirectories, put the following script in the parent directory and execute it.

#!/bin/bash
for i in `find . -name ".*"`
 do
 rename 's/.//' $i
 done