UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I wrote a script to rename all files in a directory from uppercase to lowercase and changing spaces to underscores:

#!/bin/sh

echo "rename"
read pathname
cd $pathname
for f in `ls "$pathname"` ; # listing directory for all files
do
echo "$f"
newfile=`echo "$f" | sed 'y/QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM/qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm/' | sed 'y/ /_/'` #changing uppercase filenames to lowercase
mv "$f" "$newfile"
echo "All possible filenames changed from uppercase to lowercase"
done

this script is working fine when converting from uppercase to lowercase, but it does not work when files contain spaces in their names
any ideas??

thank you

To preserve the filenames containing spaces, try a while loop.

Code:

# listing directory for all files
ls "${pathname}" | while read f 
do

Following a recent dialogue on this forum, you will be advised to check the directory before issuing a "cd".

Code:

if [ ! -d "${pathname}" ]
then
       echo "Invalid directory: ${pathname}"
       exit
fi
cd "${pathname}"