How to rename files in current directory and its subdirectories using bash script?

You can also try:

find . -name "*.wav.gz" | xargs rename -v "s/abcd124*/abcd1234$1/"

It works on newer Unix systems with "xargs" command available. Note that I edited the regular expression slightly.

Try:

find ./ -type d -execdir rename -v "s/^abcd124(.+)/abcd1234\1/" *.wav.gz ";"

Find does already provide an iterator over your files - you don't need for around it or xargs behind , which are often seen. Well - in rare cases, they might be helpful, but normally not.

Here, -execdir is useful. Gnu-find has it; I don't know if your find has it too.

But you need to make sure not to have a *.wav.gz-file in the dir you're starting this command, because else your shell will expand it, and hand the expanded names over to rename.

Note: I get an warning from rename, that I should replace \1 with $1 in the regex, but if I do so, the pattern isn't catched. I have to use \1 to make it work.

Here is another approach. Why at all search for directories, if we search for wav.gz-files?

find . -name "*.wav.gz" -exec rename -v "s/^abcd124(.+)/abcd1234\1/" {} ";"

In bash 4:

shopt -s globstarrename -v "s/^$dir\/abcd124(.+)/$dir\/abcd1234$1/" **/*.wav.gz;