How to Rename Files as Lowercase in Ubuntu Linux Recursively

Digitivity — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:08:38 +0000

Some reasons you might want to lowercase your filenames include:

1. Most webservers are case-sensitive. Because of this, most websites stick to the rule of having all files in a single case, namely lower.

2. If you’re using the command line to manipulate files, it’s easier when all the files are lower case. It’s a lot faster to type in all one case.

But it’s too time consuming to rename each file individually, so here are a few ways to rename. These are adapted from the commandlinefu website. (But the commands there have some bugs, so keep reading here.)

Renaming all the files in the current directory from uppercase to lowercase

rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *

This uses the rename script which is included with Perl, which in turn uses Perl’s rename function.

Most Linuxes and Unixes include Perl these days, including most web hosts. It’s easier and more succint than the alternatives.

Renaming all files from uppercase to lowercase in the current and subdirectories recursively

The way to do this is to feed rename a list of all files in the current directory and its subdirectories:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/'

Here’s what it means:

find prints a list of all files in the current and all subdirectories, recursively. -type f means only print the names of files, and not directories.

The | takes the output of the first command and sends it as input to the second command.

xargs takes the input (which is a list of files) and executes rename once for every filename, while appending the filename to the end of the rename command.

Normally, find puts a newline between each filename. But since a file’s name can also contain newlines, you make find delimit the filenames with a null character (ASCII 0). You do this by specifying the -print0 option. But you also have to tell xargs not to view newlines or spaces as filename delimiters, but rather only the null character. You do that with the -0 option.

Renaming files to lowercase without using Perl

Occasionally, you might not have access to Perl.

In such cases, you can use straight POSIX shell commands:

find . -type f|while read f; do mv "$f" "$(echo $f|tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')"; done

This is an alernative that’s faster:

find . -type f -execdir sh -c 'mv "'{}'" "$(echo '{}'|tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')"' \;

Top Incoming Search Terms

+linux +rename +recursive command line rename lowercase copy files to subdirectories ubuntu find xargs rename for filename in `find recursive rename how to rename a file in linux how to rename multiple file in ubuntu http://digitivity.org/tag/subdirectories linux command line rename files to lower case linux command rename all files lowercase linux command to rename all files to lowercase linux command turn upper to lower linux datei rekursiv umbenennen while read filename linux filenames to lowercase recursive linux files lowercase script linux lowercase filenames recursive linux lowercase filenames rename linux lowercase recursiv linux make lowercase filenames linux recursive rename find xargs linux rename lowercase linux rename recursive linux sh find -exec tr upper file name linux tr upper to lower recursively linux uper to lower case file linux+rename+file+upper lower case ubuntu command line lowercase file names recursively linux lowercase filename or filenames make all filenames lowercase ubuntu move file recursively ubuntu perl lowercase file names perl recursively rename to lowercase perl rename all files recursively perl rename all files to lowercase perl rename files upper case perl rename script recursive recursive all directories to lower case recursive find and rename file names recursive find ubuntu recursive lowering filenames in linux recursive move file uppercase lowercase recursive rename ubuntu recursively lowercase all folders and files recursively rename subdirectory files in linux rename 'y/a-z/a-z/' * no funciona rename 'y/a-z/a-z/' * recursive rename all files in subdirectory linux rename filenames recursive script rename files recursively in ubuntu rename files to lowercase linux including subdirectories rename lowercase filenames linux command rename lowercase linux rename lowercase ubuntu rename make lowercase recursive linux rename recursive rename recursive xargs rename recursive xargs "sh -c" rename recursively file name linux rename ubuntu rename y/a-z/a-z/ * renamig uppercase to lowercase recursively script rename lowercase extension script ubuntu rename all file lower script uppercase recursive sharing files ubuntu subdirectories tr rename recursive ubuntu batch rename all lower case ubuntu change filenames to lower case ubuntu command line rename lowercase ubuntu extension rename ubuntu file to lowercase ubuntu get filename lowercase ubuntu linux from upper to lower case ubuntu lowercase uppercase extension rename ubuntu move recursive ubuntu recurse to lowercase ubuntu recursive change file names ubuntu recursive rename ubuntu recursive subdirectory ubuntu recursively rename files capitalize ubuntu rename all the files in a directory ubuntu rename file ubuntu rename file uppercase ubuntu rename lowercase ubuntu rename recursive ubuntu rename recursive find ubuntu rename script ubuntu rename uppercase ubuntu rename uppercase to lowercase ubuntu renaming files ubuntu script find copy rename ubuntu xargs tr mv uppercase unbuntu capitalise files xargs rename

Digitivity » lowercase

How to Rename Files as Lowercase in Ubuntu Linux Recursively

Renaming all the files in the current directory from uppercase to lowercase

Renaming all files from uppercase to lowercase in the current and subdirectories recursively

Renaming files to lowercase without using Perl

Top Incoming Search Terms