remove disgusting spaces and other weird stuff from filenames

.CLEAN_FILENAMES.md

Clean Filenames

A bash script that replaces spaces, +, and certain invalid characters in filenames with underscores. It processes all files in a directory.

Installation

Run the following command to download and make the script executable:

curl -sSL "https://gist.zod.tf/4bb1596111018a3d086b6e031ba64c98/raw/cleanFilenames.sh" -o cleanFilenames.sh && chmod +x cleanFilenames.sh

Usage

The script takes one optional argument: the directory of files to rename. If no directory is specified, the script defaults to the current working directory.

./cleanFilenames.sh                # Rename files in the current directory
./cleanFilenames.sh /path/to/dir   # Rename files in /path/to/dir

For getting help:

./cleanFilenames.sh --help
./cleanFilenames.sh -h

cleanFilenames.sh

#!/bin/bash
# v1.1.0

# written with old ass MacOS /bin/bash version in mind

# Check for help flags
if [[ "$#" -eq 1 && ( "$1" == "--help" || "$1" == "-h" ) ]]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 [directory]"
  echo ""
  echo "Options:"
  echo "-h, --help                Show this help text"
  echo ""
  echo "CleanFilenames is a script that renames all files in a directory,"
  echo "replacing spaces, +, and certain invalid characters with underscores."
  echo "If no directory is passed as argument, it defaults to the current working directory."
  echo ""
  echo "Examples:"
  echo "$0                     Rename files in the current directory"
  echo "$0 /path/to/directory  Rename files in /path/to/directory"
  exit
fi

# Set the starting directory either from argument 1 or use current directory
DIR="${1:-.}"

# Define a counter variable for keeping track of the renaming process
count=0

# Use find to iterate all files and directories
find "$DIR" -depth -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
    # Replace spaces, whitespaces and questionably valid characters in filenames
    dst=$(echo "$file" | sed 's/ /_/g; s/+/_/g; s/[=:\"*<>|?]\|[$'\t\r\n']/_/g')

    # If the new path isn't the same as the old one, i.e. a change has been made
    if [ "$dst" != "$file" ]; then
        ((count++))
        # Move/rename the file or directory
        mv -v "$file" "$dst" 2>/dev/null
        echo -en "\rRenamed $count items... "  # use carriage return to show updating total
    fi
done

echo  # print a newline
echo "Renaming completed. Total items renamed: $count"