I have to rename several folders. The old folders were randomly named, and the new names allow for a consistent naming protocol. i have reconciled the existing folders with the list of new names, but there are hundreds of folders to rename and to do it manually will take forever.
the old name and new name are generally very different. for example:
old: john l,smth new: smith_john_04082013
so what i would like to do is place a list of the old names in one part of a program and the list of new names in another part, and then loop down the list of folders renaming them until the last one is done.
for example
john l,smth (to) smith_john_04082013
mary-jones 42nd street (to) jones_mary_03122013
wil-h-davis (to) davis_william_02122012
etc
i know how to use the rename command in dos, but all that 'seems' to do is just change the name of of one directory, ie rename "john l,smth" "smith_john_04082013"
i tried doing something like:
rename "john l,smth" "smith_john_04082013"; "mary-jones 42nd street" "jones_mary_03122013"; "wil-h-davis" "davis_william_02122012"
the concept being maybe using a separator was the trick to a multiple rename, but that didn't work either.
if anyone knows how to do this that would be very helpful.
TIA
Just create a batch file (plain text file with a .bat extension, like rename_folders.bat), and list each operation as a single line:
ren "john l,smth" "smith_john_04082013"
ren "mary-jones 42nd street" "jones_mary_03122013"
ren "wil-h-davis" "davis_william_02122012"
(ren is the short name for rename, which saves a little typing.)
Once you have all the lines in the file, save it in the folder where you want it to run, open a command prompt in that folder, and just run the batch file (the .bat extension is optional when you run it, as it's one of the known executable file extensions):
C:\YourBaseFolder>rename_folders
or
C:\YourBaseFolder>rename_folders.bat
Related
I have very little experience with the command line and I'm trying to do something very complicated (to me).
I have a directory with A LOT of subfolders and files in them. All file names contain the parent folder name, e.g.:
Folder1
data_Folder1.csv
other_file_Folder1.csv
Folder2
data_Folder2.csv
other_file_Folder2.csv
In another folder (all in one directory), I have a new version of all the data_FolderX.csv files and I need to replace them in the original folders. I cannot give them another name because of later analyses. Is there a way to replace the files in the original folders with the new version, in the command line?
I tried this Replacing a file into multiple folders/subdirectories but didn't work for me. Given that I have many .csv files in the derectories, I don't want to replace them all, so I don't think I should do it based on the file extension. I would also like to note that the name "FolderX" contains several other _, so in principal, I want to replace the .csv file starting with data in the FolderX.
Can anyone help?
Thanks in advance!
I need to rename 80k files in multiple folders & subfolders in the same directory. I have been trying to use ren but have been unsuccessful; I get an incorrect syntax error.
My old name looks like this:
c:/users/alice/BiDIR_DOCS_2017_Nov08020423\Company,LLC##NA##7967425.00##7967425.00\Company LLC A and A - Aug2017.pdf BiDIR_DOCS_2017_Nov08020423\Company, LLC##NA##7967425.00##7967425.00\document_# (x.y.z)-test~.pdf
and my new name looks like this:
c:/users/alice/BiDIR_DOCS_2017_Nov08020423\Company,LLC##NA##7967425.00##7967425.00\Company LLC A and A - Aug2017.pdf BiDIR_DOCS_2017_Nov08020423\Company, LLC##NA##7967425.00##7967425.00\system, a old name~ ` to # system b document (xyz)-test.pdf
I have the existing directory print in one column of Excel and in the next column what I want the directory print to be.
I'm not sure if I'm starting my ren command at the right hierarchy of my directory, or if I need quotation marks to keep the spaces and symbols in my new name.
I have tried improvising and testing on my own without success and I cannot find an article online on point.
Try FAR (find and replace) - it a free utility that works well.
http://findandreplace.sourceforge.net/
So a quick explanation. We have hundreds of projects and in each of them and in every new project we have a program where we fill in a ton of information. From that we get 20 pdf files that are called File_1, File_2 etc.
What I'd like to do is to rename the files as the example below with a bat file.
File_1 = abc.pdf
File_2 = xyz.pdf
File_3 = qwe.pdf
I want to specific in the bat file what I want file_1 should be called and file_2 etc. The files I get will always be called File_1, File_2 etc and I always want them to be renamed the same. So each time I get those files I just run the bat file. Is there a way to do this? Or is there a better way to do this?
Thanks!
I'm assuming your files will always be called "file_1", "file_2" etc.??
If they are, then you can just write a file with a line for each file. For example
ren file_1 foo.pdf
ren file_2 bar.pdf
ren file_3 foobar.pdf
Note that as you didn't specify extensions for the original filenames, I haven't either. You would want to put the full file name with extension, or use wildcards if appropriate, e.g. ren file_1.*. (Be very careful with wildcards though, or you may end up trying to rename multiple files with the same name!)
You could check if the file exists first, and only run the ren on files that are there, or you could run it and let it error for missing files (though I'm sure other people will have reasons why you shouldn't).
You should also consider whether or not there will already be a file with the name you are trying to rename to, because if there the is then the rename will error and fail.
If your files will be different names daily, you will need to give more information as to what you have and what you need.
EDIT - Response to comment below
Copy (and complete) this code, and save it as 'rename.bat' or whatever you need.
#echo off
ren file_1 abc.pdf
ren file_2 xyz.pdf
ren file_3 qwe.pdf
<<repeat as necessary>>
The #echo off just stops the batch file from displayed the commands. It will still display errors (if the file doesn't exist or if you try to rename a file to an existing filename). You really should be looking at catching the errors and doing something with it, but if you can be 100% certain that the new filenames don't exist it will work.
Also worth pointing out that as I haven't used full file names, the batch file would need to be in the same folder as your file_1, file_2 etc.
You could use move to specify the full path of the original file, and a new path (it will move and rename the files), but you still have potentially the same problems with duplicate filenames etc.
I'm assuming you will end up with a folder containing file_1, file_2 etc. so you can just copy your batch file into the folder, run it, then move all your renamed files to where they need to go. Then next time you need to run the file, your folder would only have in it the new set of file_1, file_2 etc. so you could copy in the batch file again, run it... and so on.
EDIT2 - After thought for filenames including spaces
It just occurred to me that your existing files (file_1, file_2 etc.) don't appear to have any spaces in the name, but your new filenames might (you didn't specify the names exactly). If you have spaces if filenames, make sure to add quotes to the command e.g.
ren file_1 "my new file.pdf"
You can also quote your original filenames too (quoting both wouldn't hurt even if there are no spaces) so you could try
ren "file_1" "abc.pdf"
ren "file_2" "x y z.pdf"
ren "file_3" "qw e.pdf"
etc.
I have a lot of files like these:
nsh_nyi.mp4
ott_pit.mp4
chi_wsh.mp4
nyr_mtl.mp4
dal_tbl.mp4
stl_edm.mp4
min_ari.mp4
I would like to rename all those files with onliner like so:
nsh_nyi.mp4 becomes nashville predators - new york islanders.mp4
ott_pit.mp4 becomes ottawa senators - pittsburgh penguins.mp4
Is it possible to with one command in linux, using awk,rename, sed etc?
I tried to bulk rename those files like so:
rename s/nsh/nashville\ predators/g
It will replace one part of the file, but not the second part: nyi
Of course i have all those club names in one file.
The result is:
nsh_nyi.mp4
Can't rename nsh_nyi.mp4 nsh_New-york-islanders.mp4: No such file or directory
ott_pit.mp4
Can't rename ott_pit.mp4 ott_Pittsburgh-penguins.mp4: No such file or directory
You can replace multiple patterns by listing them all separated by semi-colon as below.
rename 's/nsh/nashville\ predators/g;s/ott/ottawa\ senators/g'
Reference
I have a bunch of files I'm trying to organize quickly, and I had two questions about how to do that. I really appreciate any help! I tried searching but couldn't find anything on these specific commands for OSX.
First, I have about 100 folders in a directory - I'd like to place an folder in each one of those folders.
For example, I have
Cars/Mercedes/<br>
Cars/BMW/<br>
Cars/Audi/<br>
Cars/Jeep/<br>
Cars/Tesla/
Is there a way I can create a folder inside each of those named "Pricing" in one command, i.e. ->
Cars/Mercedes/Pricing <br>
Cars/BMW/Pricing<br>
Cars/Audi/Pricing<br>
Cars/Jeep/Pricing<br>
Cars/Tesla/Pricing
My second question is a little tougher to explain. In each of these folders, I'd like move certain files into these newly created folders (above) in the subdirectory.
Each file has a slightly different filename but contains the same string of letters - for example, in each of the above folders, I might have
Cars/Mercedes/payment123.html
Cars/BMW/payment432.html
Cars/Audi/payment999.html
Cars/Jeep/payment283.html
Is there a way to search each subdirectory for a file containing the string "payment" and move that file into a subfolder in that subdirecotry - i.e. into the hypothetical "Pricing" folders we just created above with one command for all the subdirectories in Cars?
Thanks so much~! help with either of these would be invaluable.
I will assume you are using bash, since it is the default shell in OS X. One way to do this uses a for loop over each directory to create the subdirectory and move the file. Wildcards are used to find all of the directories and the file.
for DIR in Cars/*/ ; do
mkdir "${DIR}Pricing"
mv "${DIR}payment*.html" "${DIR}Pricing/"
done
The first line finds every directory in Cars, and then runs the loop once for each, replacing ${DIR} with the current directory. The second line creates the subdirectory using the substitution. Note the double quotes, which are necessary only if the path could contain spaces. The third line moves any file in the directory whose name starts with "payment" and ends with ".html" to the subdirectory. If you have multiple files which match this, they will all be moved. The fourth line simply marks the end of the loop.
If you are typing this directly into the command line, you can combine it into a single line:
for DIR in Cars/*/ ; do mkdir "${DIR}Pricing"; mv "${DIR}payment*.html" "${DIR}Pricing/"; done