Replace german special chars in file and folder names

replace_spec_chars.sh

#!/bin/bash
# This replaces german special chars in all files and folder under the specified folder
# Call this via "./replace_spec_chars.sh `pwd`"
#
# PREREQUISITES: make sure to have the `rename` command installed which accepts perl regexs

TARGET_FOLDER=$1
CURR_DIR=`pwd`

# make sure to preserve spaces in file and folder names
while IFS= read -d $'\0' -r CURRENT_FOLDER; do

  # just For debugging, print current directory
  #echo $CURRENT_FOLDER
  cd "$CURRENT_FOLDER"
  # switch LATIN1 chars over to UTF8
  rename 'BEGIN {binmode STDIN, ":encoding(latin1)"; use Encode;} $_=encode("utf8", $_)' *
  rename 's/ä/ae/' *
  rename 's/ö/oe/' *
  rename 's/ü/ue/' *
  rename 's/ß/ss/' *
done < <(find $TARGET_FOLDER -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 8 -type d -print0)
cd $CURR_DIR