need script to rename files replacing double space with single space

Question

Can someone help me figure out how to remove double spaces from directory names?

I'm using a service which gives me a directory structure of files whose names contain spaces. Sometimes the directory names contain double spaces, and some of my home grown scripts can't handle it.

I'd like a shell command combination which will rename the directories removing double space. Sort of like sed 's/ / /g'.

Luckily there are no children directories whose parents also need to be renamed.

I can find the candidates like this

sh> find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -print 
/Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Running Average-362/Edward  Cacioppo_2973_assignsubmission_file_
/Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Implement histogram-3169/Edward  Cacioppo_3102_assignsubmission_file_

But when I try to use xargs to manipulate this sequence of lines, xargs substitution seems to remove the double space. Thus I cannot generate the command line mv old-name new-name

sh> find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -print | xargs -I % echo %
/Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Running Average-362/Edward Cacioppo_2973_assignsubmission_file_
/Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Implement histogram-3169/Edward Cacioppo_3102_assignsubmission_file_

I was trying something like the following, but it doesn't work.

sh> find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -print | xargs -p -I % mv  "%" `echo "%" | sed 's/  / /g'`
mv /Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Running Average-362/Edward Cacioppo_2973_assignsubmission_file_ /Users/jimka/Downloads/Scala_Intro/SCALAIN_E-Running Average-362/Edward Cacioppo_2973_assignsubmission_file_?...

Notice when xargs asks whether to execute the mv command, the doubled space has already been converted to a single space.

Answer 1

Instead of xargs and mv, I would prefer rename tool:

Depending on which rename tool you have:

find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -exec rename -n '  ' ' ' {} +

or

find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -exec rename -n 's/  / /' {} +

(Remove -n option (dry-run) to actually perform the renaming if you're happy with the output)

---

Or if you want to stick using mv (no xargs needed, find -exec will do):

find ~/Downloads/Scala_Intro -name '*  *' -exec sh -c 'mv "$1" "${1//  / }"' find-sh {} \;