bash error renaming files with spaces - mv target is not a directory

Question

I\'m trying to rename a bunch of files which contain spaces in them, getting rid of the spaces. I thought I found the correct bash command:

for f in *.txt; do m         


        

Answer 1

Try:

for f in *.txt; do mv "$f" "${f// /}"; done

Three points:

1. The quotes around a shell variable should not be escaped.

2. In general, it is a good idea to put double-quotes around every reference to a shell variable.

3. ${f/ /} removes just the first occurrence of a space. To remove all spaces, use ${f// /}.

What went wrong

$ touch {a,b}" .txt"
$ ls *.txt
a .txt  b .txt
$ for f in *.txt; do mv \"$f\" ${f/ /}; done
mv: target `a.txt' is not a directory
mv: target `b.txt' is not a directory

The expression \"$f\" does not behave like it is double quoted. It expands to two arguments, such as "a and .txt", where the double-quotes are treated as normal characters, just like the a is a normal character. Because there are three arguments to mv ("a and .txt" and a.txt), mv believes that you are trying to move the first two arguments to the third and the third is required to be a directory. Since the third is not a directory, it issues an error message.