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$ ls cn*
cn blah blah.txt
$ ls cn\ *
ls: cannot access 'cn *': No such file or directory
$ ls cn*|hexdump -C
00000000  63 6e e2 80 85 62 6c 61  68 c2 a0 62 6c 61 68 2e  |cn...blah..blah.|
00000010  74 78 74 0a                                       |txt.|
$ mv cn blah blah.txt 'cn blah blah.txt'
mv: 'cn blah blah.txt' and 'cn blah blah.txt' are the same file

Note: 0xe28085 is the UTF-8 encoding for U+2005(FOUR-PER-EM SPACE) and 0xC2A0 is the UTF-8 encoding for U+A0(NO-BREAK SPACE), and I copy pasted the first argument to mv and that is why 's are not needed around the file name, because there are no normal spaces(U+20) in the file name.

How do I rename the file so that I can type the file's name with a regular space(i.e. U+20)?

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

With zsh:

autoload zmv
zmv '*' $'${f//[\u2005\ua0]/ }'

U+2005 is usually classified as blank or space, so you can also do:

zmv '*' '${f//[[:blank:]]/ }'

Or:

zmv '*' '${f//[[:space:]]/ }'

To replace any character classified as blank or space with a U+0020 space (in the names of non-hidden files in the current working directory).

U+00A0 more rarely so as on several systems including GNU ones it's not classified as such on the ground that it is not to be used as separator/delimiter.

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1
  • I ended up just rsyncing to a computer with a GUI and changing it with the GUI, and rsyncing it back. Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 22:04

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