I have in a folder a lot of .pdf files with the naming format of whatevername space random code starting with U.pdf and I want to remove whatever is the naming before U.
Example Name Format:
Alex U153569.pdf -> should be renamed to U153569.pdf
This is what I have so far:
foreach ($test in $testpdf) {
Get-ChildItem -Filter *.pdf | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -Replace ????????? }
}
What should be the correct one?
This should work:
$_.name -Replace '.*\s(?=U)'
Without testing you should be able to use the split operator (no need for a regular expression). You can split on a space as below and index into the second split [1]
$testpdf = Get-ChildItem *.pdf
foreach ($test in $testpdf) {
Rename-Item $test.name -NewName (($test.name -split " ")[1])
}
Related
I tried following Remove leading spaces in Windows file names but it's not working for my use case.
I have a lot of folders and filenames that either have a blank space at the front or at the end. How would I go about removing those spaces in bulk?
This was the command-line command I used after following the linked post:
for /R %A IN ("* ") do #for /F "tokens=*" %B IN ("%~nxA") do #ren "%A" "%B"
But it didn't work out.
Update: thank you to all who replied trying to help. I think there is just a Windows-level glitch in the file system. I ended up just having to manually create new folders without leading and trailing spaces and then dragging all the files over manually then renaming those to non-trailing and leading names as well.
It's unclear whether or not you want a PowerShell solution, but there's a reasonable assumption to be made you might.
If you wanted a PowerShell solution, you could try this:
function Test-LeadingTrailingWhitespace {
param(
[Parameter(Mandatory)]
[String]$String
)
$String[0] -eq ' ' -Or $String[-1] -eq ' '
}
Get-ChildItem -Path "<path_to_folder>" | ForEach-Object {
if ($_.PSIsContainer -And (Test-LeadingTrailingWhitespace -String $_.Name)) {
$Destination = Split-Path -Path $_.FullName -Parent
$NewName = $_.Name.Trim()
Move-Item -Path $_ -Destination (Join-Path -Path $Destination -ChildPath $NewName)
}
elseif (Test-LeadingTrailingWhitespace -String $_.BaseName) {
$Destination = Split-Path -Path $_.FullName -Parent
$NewName = $_.BaseName.Trim() + $_.Extension
Move-Item -Path $_ -Destination (Join-Path -Path $Destination -ChildPath $NewName)
}
}
To be on the safe side, you could add -WhatIf or -Confirm on the Move-Item cmdlet. The former will tell you what would have changed without that parameter without actually making any changes (like a 'dry run'). The latter will prompt you for confirmation before making each change, giving you a chance to validate incrementally and not make changes en masse from the moment you hit enter.
Trim() is a method available for all strings in PowerShell:
Returns a new string in which all leading and trailing occurrences of a set of specified characters from the current string are removed.
You can loop over files and folder and check if they actually have a leading or trailing whitespace before renaming, this would avoid errors like:
Rename-Item: Source and destination path must be different.
We can use the -match matching operator with a simple regex ^\s|\s$ (starts with whitespace or ends with whitespace - regex101 link for a simple example) to see if the file or folder should be renamed:
Get-ChildItem path\to\startingfolder -Recurse | ForEach-Object {
$newName = switch($_) {
# handle folders
{ $_.PSIsContainer -and $_.Name -match '^\s|\s$' } {
$_.Name.Trim()
break
}
# handle files
{ $_.BaseName -match '^\s|\s$' -or $_.Extension -match '^\s|\s$' } {
$_.BaseName.Trim() + $_.Extension.Trim()
break
}
# if none of the above conditions were true, continue with next item
Default {
return
}
}
Rename-Item -LiteralPath $_.FullName -NewName $newName
}
Personally, I'd do this in two steps to rename folders and files separately. This to overcome the problem that when a folder is renamed, the items inside that folder all have a new path.
Using switch -Force allows renaming items such as hidden or read-only files
Using -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue swallows the error when the new name is equal to the existing name
$rootPath = 'X:\thepath'
# first the folders and subfolders (deepest nesting first)
(Get-ChildItem -Path $rootPath -Directory -Recurse | Sort-Object FullName -Descending) |
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name.Trim()} -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
# next the files
(Get-ChildItem -Path $rootPath -File -Recurse) |
Rename-Item -NewName {'{0}{1}' -f $_.BaseName.Trim(), $_.Extension.Trim()} -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
I have about 600 video files with the $ special character in the title.
I want to batch replace this with a letter s.
I found the powershell code online below and it works fine with replacing letters with other letters but fails when trying to replace the $ special character
get-childitem -recurse | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace "",""}
I tried using the code below and it ends up adding an s to the end of the file type instead of replacing the $
get-childitem -recurse | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace "$","s"}
$hortvid.mp4 becomes $hortvid.mp4s instead of shortvid.mp4
Any ideas on how to get this to work correctly?
Just use \ escape character:
When running line in the directory:
get-childitem -recurse | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace "\$","s"}
input file:
$hortvid.mp4
output file is renamed:
shortvid.mp4
$ is used for specify variable in powershell. And a string with double quote is evaluate in powershell like this :
$variable1="Hello"
$variable2="$variable1 world"
$variable2
if you dont want evaluate a character into a double quote string, you can backslash you caractere like the proposed solution of #lww. Or simply, you can use simple quote.
Like this :
Get-ChildItem -recurse | Rename-Item -Newname { $_.Name -replace '$', 's'}
Actually, I have focused my cursor Powershell in a particular folder, but I would like to rename all files contained in that folder so that each file is renamed like this:
filename.xml.traite => filename.xml
Indeed, I want to replace ".traite" by empty string
Heres what I would use:
Get-ChildItem | Foreach-Object{
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName $_.Name.Replace("traite","")
}
Or this, -whatif for testing. Mostly any parameter you can pipe to can accept a scriptblock. A missing second argument to -replace is assumed to be null.
Get-ChildItem | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace '.traite' } -whatif
What if: Performing the operation "Rename File" on target "Item: C:\users\j\foo\filename.xml.traite Destination: C:\users\j\foo\filename.xml".
I am trying to use Rename-Item to remove trailing characters including the hyphen from a filename, ex. 123456.001.zip-4.22815.ren to 123456-001.zip.
Rename-Item -NewName ($_.Name.split('-')[0])
seems to be something I am missing after the split.
The split operation must be performed in a scriptblock ({}). A simple expression (()) won't work.
... | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.Split('-')[0] }
Add -replace '^(\d+)\.', '$1-' if you want the period replaced with a hyphen.
... | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.Split('-')[0] -replace '^(\d+)\.', '$1-' }
I got my script to work with these changes;
$src = "D:\temp"
Get-ChildItem -path $src -filter *.ren | ForEach-Object {
Rename-item -path $_.FullName -newname $_.Name.Split('-')[0] }
I'm trying to do the following:
Rename-Item c:\misc\*.xml *.tmp
I basically want to change the extension on every files within a directory to .tmp instead of .xml. I can't seem to find a straight forward way to do this in PowerShell.
From example 4 in the help documentation of Rename-Item retrieved with the command:
get-help Rename-Item -examples
Example:
Get-ChildItem *.txt| Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt','.log' }
Note the explanation in the help documentation for the escaping backslash in the replace command due to it using regular expressions to find the text to replace.
To ensure the regex -replace operator matches only an extension at the end of the string, include the regex end-of-string character $.
Get-ChildItem *.txt | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt$','.log' }
This takes care of the case mentioned by #OhadSchneider in the comments, where we might have a file named lorem.txt.txt and we want to end up with lorem.txt.log rather than lorem.log.log.
Now that the regex is sufficiently tightly targeted, and inspired by #etoxin's answer, we could make the command more usable as follows:
Get-ChildItem | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt$','.log' }
That is, there is no need to filter before the pipe if our regex sufficiently filters after the pipe. And altering the command string (e.g. if you copy the above command and now want to use it to change the extension of '.xml' files) is no longer required in two places.
This works well too when you're in the desired directory.
Dir | Rename-Item –NewName { $_.name –replace "old","new" }
The existing answers suggest the -replace operator, but what if the file is called a.xml.xml? Both .xml substrings will be replaced and the end result would be a.tmp.tmp. Fortunately, there's a .NET method for this:
Dir *.xml | rename-item -newname { [io.path]::ChangeExtension($_.name, ".tmp") }
(Manish Kumar was close with GetFileNameWithoutExtension but this is more elegant and probably a bit more efficient, not that it overly matters in this case)
Here's another variant that will work.
dir *.xml | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.BaseName + ".tmp"}
$_.BaseName will do the "base" name without the (last) extension.
a shortened version using the alias would be:
ls *.xml | ren -new {$_.BaseName + ".tmp"}
dir -Recurse | where-object -FilterScript {$_.Extension -eq ".xml"} | Rename-Item -NewName {[System.IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_.fullname) + ".tmp"}
use -WhatIf to evaluate the result first
Even easier - remember that the replace search string is a regular expression,
dir *.xml | rename-item -newname {$_.name -replace "xml$","tmp"}
The "$" represents end-of-string, so the characters "xml" must be the last three chars of the filename.
This seems to work and is a pythonic i.e simple is better than complex (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/) way of doing it (once you are in the directory):
$files = Get-ChildItem -file -Filter *.xml;
ForEach ($file in $files)
{
$n = $file.Basename
Copy-Item -Path $file -Destination "$n.tmp"
Remove-Item "$n.xml"
}