file_management.md

File Management

If you use a POSIX operating system where "everything is a file™" you'll likely be managing files frequently.

zsh of course adds some nice file management functions.

Listing and Globbing

$ ls ~/*/*/*.txt

$ ls ~/**/tmp/*

zmv

zmv is a user contributed function included with most zsh distributions. It allows you to move, copy, or link files based on pattern matching. You can read more in the functions section.

First load zmv in your .zshrc file or local shell with.

$ autoload -U zmv

Example usage:

# rename all .JPEG extensions to .jpg
$ zmv '(*).JPEG' '$1.jpg'

# replace all spaces in file and folder names with underscore
# notice parameter replacement is available from the variables section
$ zmv '(* *)' '${1// /_}'

The zmv widget can also handy copying and symlinking. You can use it with alias zcp='zmv -C' and alias zln='zmv -L' or you can symlink files names zcp and zln in your $fpath to zmv.

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