Question

I run unsuccessfully in Mac

mv .* *

and

mv .* ./*

My files disappeared into thin air.

How can you convert dot-files to non-dotfiles safely?

Answer 1

for i in `ls -d .*`; do mv $i "`echo $i | sed 's/^.//'`"; done

or, much easier,

rename 's/^.//' `ls -d .*`

if your system have got it.

In zsh, you could just use .* safely, but in bash you’ll have to use ls -d .*