Filenames: Replace %20 with spaces/underscores?

[cognaq]

Is there any way to batch replace the "%20", which at some point of transfering files over the Internet, appeared on Ubuntu. On Win7, downloading the files preserves spaces. Also, it seems to be the case with only some files.

E.g."A.1.%20QEII%20Mean.ppt" is to become "A.1. QEII Mean.ppt" or "A.1._QEII_Mean.ppt" or "A.1.QEIIMean.ppt" even.

[t.rei]

I'm having that very same issue when downloading using firefox. It works "properly" when using chromium-browser.

Interested in a solution that preferably fixes firefox behavior. It used to work just fine.

[irv]

I found this answer by doing a web search.

Since spaces are not allowed in a URL, the %20 represents a space. If you right click on a link to the file, you should be able to save the file with spaces instead of the %20's. But if you load the file in your browser and then try to save it, it ends up with the %20's.
I check some of my files on my server in Firefox and Chrom and they both have the %20 in them.

[cognaq]

I found this answer by doing a web search.

I check some of my files on my server in Firefox and Chrom and they both have the %20 in them.

After some experiments, I can confirm this behaviour. On both Firefox and Chromium.
Furthermore, I downloaded a large amount of files using Firefox on Windows 7, then I archived them and uncompressed them on Ubuntu, they also had the %20 instead of spaces. On Win7 they hadn't.

So, is there any way to solve this without manually changing filenames (300+ files)?

[Lars Noodén]

You might be able to use rename (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/prename.1.html) if you can figure out the right regular expression. Test on small batches first. I would guess that something like this might do it:



rename 's/%20/ /' *

[nothingspecial]

You might be able to use rename (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/prename.1.html) if you can figure out the right regular expression. Test on small batches first. I would guess that something like this might do it:



rename 's/%20/ /' *


The -n option of rename will show you what it would do without actually doing it, which is useful for testing



rename -n 's/%20/ /' *