UNIX: How to change all hidden folders/files to visible in a directory

Question

I have a directory with more than 100 hidden folders (.folder) and I want to make them visible (folder). Is there a way to do it with one command instead of doing this for each file separately? The command I have used so far is

mv .folder folder

Please help.

Answer 1

This worked to me:

rename 's/\.//;' .*

It looks for all files with .something and renames to something.

Answer 2

I am not sure why you would want to do this but you could do the following three commands

ls -a | grep "^\.[^\.]" | sed -e "s/\.\(.*\)$/mv \0 \1/" > mv_hidden
chmod +x mv_hidden
./mv_hidden
rm mv_hidden

You might want to check that the list of command produce in the file mv_hidden looks correct by executing

less mv_hidden

Answer 3

To change all files in the current directory from hidden to non-hidden:

for f in .*; do
    if [ "$f" != . -a "$f" != .. ]; then
        mv "$f" "${f:1}"
    fi
done