detox

Remove spaces and other undesirable characters from a file's name

$ detox [path/to/file]

$ detox [[-n|--dry-run]] -r [path/to/directory]

$ detox -r [path/to/directory]

detox [OPTION]... [FILE]...

-h, --help
    Print help information and exit

-V, --version
    Print version information and exit

-n, --dry-run
    Simulate actions without modifying files (combine with -v)

-v, --verbose
    Print details of actions to stderr

-q, --quiet
    Suppress all non-error messages

-r, --recursive
    Recursively process directories

-f, --force
    Process all files, even if already detoxed

-s SCHEME, --scheme=SCHEME
    Select cleaning scheme (default: unix)

-l FILE, --log-file=FILE
    Log processed files to FILE

-a FILE, --after-file=FILE
    Process files modified after FILE's timestamp

Detox is a versatile command-line utility for cleaning filenames, making them compatible with various filesystems and operating systems. It replaces or removes problematic characters such as spaces, control codes, non-ASCII symbols, and shell metacharacters that can cause issues during processing, backups, or transfers.

By default, detox uses the unix scheme, converting spaces to underscores, removing certain punctuation, and truncating overly long names. Users can select from multiple schemes like windows, iso8859-1, utf_8, and custom configurations via a file.

Common use cases include sanitizing downloaded archives, preparing files for version control, or batch-renaming media libraries. It supports recursive processing of directories, dry-run simulations to preview changes, verbose output for monitoring, and logging for audits. Detox operates in-place but safely skips already clean files, preserving original names when possible.

Unlike simple scripts, detox handles edge cases like duplicate names intelligently and supports internationalization, ensuring broad applicability across Unix-like systems.

Modifies files in-place; use -n for testing. May alter names irreversibly—backup critical data. Not suitable for all locales without proper scheme.

unix (default), windows, windows-1250, iso8859-1, l1, utf_8, custom (via file). See detox -s ? for list.

Define via ~/.detoxrc or -s file://path/to/scheme.rc with rules like sequence SPACE '_';

Created by Douglas Thrift in 2001 as a Perl script for filename sanitization. Ported to C for performance, now maintained on GitHub with ongoing scheme updates and bug fixes since 2010s.

mv(1), rename(1), mmv(1)