execdir

Replace a character in all filenames

 in GNU/Linux  tagged exec / execdir / find / mv / replace by

The following command will search for files in the current directory (.) that have in their name the colon character :.
The files that match will then be renamed and all instances of the colon character : in the names will be replaced by the full stop character ..

find . -name "*:*" -execdir sh -c 'mv "$1" "${1//:/.}"' _ {} \;
  • -execdir command {} + is like -exec, but the specified command is run from the subdirectory containing the matched file, which is not normally the directory in which you started find.

Example: if you have a file named 2017-03-15 14:34:44.116002523.png then it will be renamed to 2017-03-15 14.34.44.116002523.png.