I have downloaded a lot of files in one directory, but many of them are stored with URL escaped filename, containing sign percents folowed by two hexadecimal chars, like: ls -ltr $HOME/Downloads/ -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 13171425 24 nov 10:07 Swisscom%20Mobile%20Unlimited%20Kurzanleitung-%282011-05-12%29.pdf -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 1525794 24 nov 10:08 31010ENY-HUAWEI%20E173u-1%20HSPA%20USB%20Stick%20Quick%20Start-%28V100R001_01%2CEnglish%2CIndia-Reliance%2CC%2Ccolor%29.pdf ... All theses names match the following form whith exactly 3 parts: Name of the object -( Revision, and/or Date, useless ... ). Extension In same command, I would like to obtain unde My goal is to having one command to rename all this files to obtain: -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 13171425 24 nov 10:07 Swisscom_Mobile_Unlimited_Kurzanleitung.pdf -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 1525794 24 nov 10:08 31010ENY-HUAWEI_E173u-1_HSPA_USB_Stick_Quick_Start.pdf I've successfully do the job in full bash with: urlunescape() { local srce="$1" done=false part1 newname ext while ! $done ;do part1="${srce%%%*}" newname="$part1\\x${srce:${#part1}+1:2}${srce:${#part1}+3}" [ "$part1" == "$srce" ] && done=true || srce="$newname" done newname="$(echo -e $srce)" ext=${newname##*.} newname="${newname%-(*}" echo ${newname// /_}.$ext } for file in *;do mv -i "$file" "$(urlunescape "$file")" done ls -ltr -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 13171425 24 nov 10:07 Swisscom_Mobile_Unlimited_Kurzanleitung.pdf -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 1525794 24 nov 10:08 31010ENY-HUAWEI_E173u-1_HSPA_USB_Stick_Quick_Start.pdf or using sed, tr, bash ... and sed: for file in *;do echo -e $( echo $file | sed 's/%\(..\)/\\x\1/g' ) | sed 's/-(.*\.\([^\.]*\)$/.\1/' | tr \ \\n _\\0 | xargs -0 mv -i "$file" done ls -ltr -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 13171425 24 nov 10:07 Swisscom_Mobile_Unlimited_Kurzanleitung.pdf -rw-r--r-- 2 user user 1525794 24 nov 10:08 31010ENY-HUAWEI_E173u-1_HSPA_USB_Stick_Quick_Start.pdf But, I'm sure, there must exist simplier and/or shorter way to do this.