Change filenames using bash script: Replace commas and whitespaces by underscores

user_10746046 0
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My files are of the format

Country, City S1.txt

e.g.

USA, Los Angeles S1.txt
USA, San Francisco S3.txt
UK, Glouchester S4.txt
Argentina, Buenos Aires S7.txt

I wish to change them to

Country_City_S1.txt

e.g.

USA_Los_Angeles_S1.txt
USA_San_Franciso_S3.txt
UK_Glouchester_S4.txt
Argentina_Buenos_Aires_S7.txt

To remove the comma I use the following sed command:

sed -i 's/,//g'

To replace the whitespaces with underscore, I use the following sed command:

sed -i 's/ /_/g'

Question: Is there a way to combine the above two commands into one? Or is there a neater way to accomplish the above?

Notes:

  1. I have changed the title of my original post to better reflect what I need to be done. I am sorry for any confusion caused as a result of the change.

  2. I understand now what I need, which is a bash script and not sed to change filenames.

  3. I thank all those who have replied with their suggested sed commands.

  4. I prefer to use the mv command in a bash script as in for example *for f in .txt; do mv .......; done

sed whitespace replace regex
4 Answers

Replace any combination of spaces and commas with a single underscore:

sed -E 's/[, ]+/_/g'

See live demo.

To rename files using this regex on any *nix OS (macos doesn't ship with rename):

for f in *.txt; do mv $f $(echo "$f" | sed -E 's/[, ]+/_/g'); done

If your *nix has the rename command (brew install rename if you're macos):

rename 's/[, ]+/_/g' *.txt
user_2561960

Merge your two sed expressions:

sed 's/,//g; s/ /_/g'
user_62557570

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed 's/,//g;y/ /_/' file

Remove commas and translate spaces to underscores.

Or perhaps:

sed -E s/,? +/_/g' file

To rename file names, perhaps:

sed -E 'h;s/,? +//g;H;g;s/(.*)\n(.*)/mv "\1" "\2"/e' <<<"$filename"
user_9674920

One line solution here:

find *.txt | sed -E 'p;s/[, ]+/_/g' | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 -n2 mv

This is a very useful command template for batch renaming files:

find ... | sed 'p;s/...' | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 -n2 mv
user_43648690
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