Move folders that have an apostophe in their name

Question

Hoping this is an easy one - can't quite get it to work.

I need to move all folders, and content (no sub folder) that have at least one apostrophe/quote in their name.

Any pointers?

@wjandrea As mv is one of the tags, I'd assume that they're using that. — TheOdd, Apr 18 '17 at 15:47

heemayl · Answer 1 · 2017-04-18T17:04:54.503

2

You need to escape ' using one of the usual escaping methods. BTW the glob pattern you will need is *<glob_pattern_here>*/, the trailing / will make the shell to match only directory(ies).

Using backslash, \:
```
mv -t /destination/ *\'*/ 
```
Using double quotes, ":
```
mv -t /destination/ *"'"*/
```
Using single quotes, ', this is actually same as using the backslashed one:
```
mv -t /destination/ *''\'''* 
```

You can do a echo mv ... first as a dry-run. Replace /destination/ with your actual destination.

Also, you can try to use tab-completion if you feel to do it interactively.

edited Apr 18 '17 at 17:04

answered Apr 18 '17 at 16:01

heemayl

91,753

''\''' is the same as \' since each '' is a single-quoted null string. – wjandrea Apr 18 '17 at 16:36
@wjandrea yeah, that's correct. – heemayl Apr 18 '17 at 17:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 18 '17 at 15:58

0

I'm sure there are simpler ways, but this should work in sh with no spaces in the file name

mv *[\"\']*

answered Apr 18 '17 at 15:58

prolificslacker

1,275

Move folders that have an apostophe in their name

2 Answers2