I have found several similar questions that have solutions, except they don't involve variables. I have a particular pattern in a tree of files and directories - the pattern is the word TEMPLATE. I want a script file to rename all of the files and directories by replacing the word TEMPLATE with some other name that is contained in the variable ${newName} If I knew that the value of ${newName} was say "Fred lives here", then the command find . -name '*TEMPLATE*' -exec bash -c 'mv "$0" "${0/TEMPLATE/Fred lives here}"' {} \; will do the job However, if my script is: newName="Fred lives here" find . -name '*TEMPLATE*' -exec bash -c 'mv "$0" "${0/TEMPLATE/${newName}}"' {} \; then the word TEMPLATE is replaced by null rather than "Fred lives here" I need the "" around $0 because there are spaces in the path name, so I can't do something like: find . -name '*TEMPLATE*' -exec bash -c 'mv "$0" "${0/TEMPLATE/"${newName}"}"' {} \; Can anyone help me get this script to work so that all files and directories that contain the word TEMPLATE have TEMPLATE replaced by whatever the value of ${newName} is eg, if newName="A different name" and a I had directory of /foo/bar/some TEMPLATE directory/with files then the directory would be renamed to /foo/bar/some A different name directory/with files and a file called some TEMPLATE file would be renamed to some A different name file