Find and replace filename recursively in a directory

Question

I want to rename all the files in a folder which starts with 123_xxx.txt to xxx.txt.

For example, my directory has:

123_xxx         


        

Answer 1

If the names are fixed you can visit each directory and perform the renaming in a subshell (to avoid changing the current directory) fairly simply. This is how I renamed a bunch of new_paths.json files each to paths.json:

for file in $(find root_directory -name new_paths.json)
  do
     (cd $(dirname $file) ; mv new_paths.json paths.json)
  done