bash: trouble with find and sed in a directory

Question

Pulling my hair out - somebody save me from an early Q-ball.

I have a folder with loads of powerpoint files and I want to change a substring in each title. All of them are of the form "lecture 2 2014.pptx" and I want to change "2014" to "2016".

Insider the directory I try commands like:

find . -name "*2014*" | xargs -0 sed -i 's/2014/2016/g'

to no avail. Any advice?

Edit my goal is to change the file name. "Lecture 2 2014.pptx" to "Lecture 2 2016.pptx"

Sorry, I wanted to know where I am erring with `find`+ `sed`. I know you can use `mv`. Thanks either way. — invictus, Jan 17 '16 at 20:15
Moreover, `mv` just creates a new file with "2016", when I want to replace "2014" with "2016". That is, replace the existing files, not copy the existing files with new names. — invictus, Jan 17 '16 at 20:28
Wait, so when you say "change the title" you mean "change the filename"? I'm confused... — Tom Fenech, Jan 17 '16 at 20:39
Sorry, poor use of language on my part, indeed I want to change the file name. — invictus, Jan 17 '16 at 21:01
Sed changes file contents, not file names. You really want `mv` (or one of the `rename`s). — Benjamin W., Jan 17 '16 at 21:15

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 17 '16 at 20:49

0

rename s/2014/2016/ *2014.pptx

If your list is too long to expand by shell try:

find -name \*2014.pptx -exec rename s/2014/2016/ {} \;

answered Jan 17 '16 at 20:49

nsilent22

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 17 '16 at 21:23

rename was already mentioned. Be aware that there are two version floating around: one with the syntax

rename [options] expression replacement file...

and one with the syntax

rename s/old/new/ file...

As an alternative: a simple Bash loop with a regex extracting the "2014" from each file name, replacing it with "2016"

re='(.*)2014(.*)'

for fname in *2014*; do
    [[ $fname =~ $re ]]
    mv "$fname" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}2016${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
done

bash: trouble with find and sed in a directory

2 Answers2