Surround function parameter with single quotes

Question

I wrote the following function to recursively rename files in some subdirectories:

rrename(){ find . -type f -name $1 -execdir mv {} $2 ';' }

This works fine when I call it like this:

rrename '*.md' renamed.md

however, I would rather not need to include the single quotes and call it like this instead:

rrename *.md renamed.md

I tried this but it still does not work:

rrename(){ find . -type f -name "'$1'" -execdir mv {} $2 ';' }

HOw can I fix it?

Answer 1

When *.md is unquoted, the pattern gets expanded before the arguments are handed to the function. In that case, $1 is the first markdown file in the current directory and $2 is the second one. If you want to pass a pattern to a function, you must quote it.

Similarly, in the function, when $1 is unquoted it will be expanded (to markdown files in the current directory) before find is launched.

Do it this way:

rrename() { find . -type f -name "$1" -execdir mv {} "$2" ';' }
# ...............................^..^................^..^

rrename '*.md' renamed.md
# ......^....^

All those quotes are necessary.

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Tangentially, what happens when there are multiple *.md files in a particular directory? All of them are getting renamed to one file.