Replace exact part of file name with Powershell - powershell

I tried the code found here without success.
What I need is to replace an exact text with another, but this code doesn't seem to deal with exact text.
This is the code I used, and what I need is, for example, for a file name that ends with ".L.wav" to be replaced with "_L.wav", but what happens is that powershell tries to rename even the file that ends with ".BL.wav" into "_L.wav".
Thank you.
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".L.wav","_L.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".LFE.wav","_LFE.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".R.wav","_R.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".BL.wav","_LSR.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".BR.wav","_RSR.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".SL.wav","_LSS.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".SR.wav","_RSS.wav"}
Read-Host -Prompt "Press Enter to exit" ```

The dot in regex means Any Character. Without escaping that, things go wrong.
Try
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace ('{0}$' -f [regex]::Escape('.L.wav')),'_L.wav'}
or manually escape the regex metacharacters:
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '\.L\.wav$','_L.wav'}
The $ at the end anchors the text to match at the end on the string
Also, instead of doing ls *.* | Rename-Item {...}, better use
(Get-ChildItem -Filter '*.L.wav' -File) | Rename-Item {...}
(ls is alias to Get-ChildItem )
Using the -Filter you can specify what files you're looking for.
Using the -File switch, you make sure you do not also try to rename folder objects.
By surrounding the Get-ChildItem part of the code in brackets, you make sure the gathering of the files is complete before you start renaming them. Otherwise, chances are the code will try and keep renaming files that are already processed.

Related

Powershell - Multiple file ext on rename doesnt work

I have a large amount of files in a large amount of folders that I want to set to all have the same file extension. Using this works for single file ext
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | ForEach-Object { Rename-Item -Path $_.PSPath -NewName $_.Name.replace(".webp",".jpg")}
But using this for multiple files ext does nothing
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | ForEach-Object { Rename-Item -Path $_.PSPath -NewName $_.Name.replace(".jpeg.png.webp",".jpg")}
I have tried .* for the file ext to cover all of them and adding spaces between the exts but this does nothing either.
Can someone point out where I am being an idiot?
To avoid renaming parts of the file name that are not the extension, I would advise against using -replace, unless you treat it as it should by escaping the characters that have special meaning for regex (the dot) and by anchoring the string to replace.
Better use a dedicated .Net function:
(Get-ChildItem -Filter '*.jpeg','*.png','*.webp' -File -Recurse) | Rename-Item -NewName {[System.IO.Path]::ChangeExtension($_.Name, ".jpg")}
or if you do want to use -replace:
(Get-ChildItem -Filter '*.jpeg','*.png','*.webp' -File -Recurse) | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.(jpeg|png|webp)$', '.jpg' }
Also, by specifying the extensions in the -Filter parameter of Get-ChildItem, you do not iterate all files, eventhough they can have extensions you do not want to rename, plus Get-ChidItem will do its job faster.
You can use | for OR operations.
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace "\.jpeg$|\.png$|\.webp$",".jpg" }
the \. is needed to match a literal ., and the $ is needed to tell the command to only match those three strings when they occur at the end of the filename.

Powershell: replace special characters of file names

I should start off by saying that I am still a beginner in powershell scripting.
I am trying to rename all files recursively in a directory by replacing a "+" with a " " in the file name.
The command I use is: Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace "+", " "} but doesn't work and gives me the following error:
Instead if I do this: Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace "a", " "} everything works well.
I think the problem is with the "+" character but can't find anything on the web that tackles this problem. Does anyone know how to represent it or how to solve this?
You must escape the plus sign and the command should work:
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace "\+", " "}

Replace Part of Filename if Filename Already Exists

In this question, How do I rename part of a filename, if the newly renamed filename already exists? Want the newly attempted filename to overwrite the existing file. Also want to rename folders within folders within folders.
Replace "Default" with "VOD" in filename,
Replace Part of File Name Powershell
Get-ChildItem Default_*.csv |
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '^Default','VOD'}
ls *.csv | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace "Default","VOD"}
Solution here was not working with -Force:
Get-ChildItem *.* -File -Recurse |
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace 'Default','VOD'} -Force
As per this question and answer: rename-item and override if filename exists
Use Move-Item and -Destination, and also swap $_.Name for $_.FullName (if you don't do that it will throw everything into your current directory, because Name is just the name of the file, not the full path). Check using -WhatIf to see what operations will be carried out, just in case:
With -WhatIf:
Get-ChildItem *.* -File -Recurse |
Move-Item -Destination {$_.FullName -replace 'Default','VOD'} -WhatIf
Output:
What if: Performing the operation "Move File" on target "Item: C:\temp\pstest\Default_77.txt Destination: C:\temp\pstest\VOD_77.txt".
Now with -Force:
When you're comfortable with the output from using the -WhatIf parameter, change it to -Force to complete the file move.
Get-ChildItem *.* -File -Recurse |
Move-Item -Destination {$_.FullName -replace 'Default','VOD'} -Force

Powershell replace characters in files within sub-directories using -LiteralPath

I want to replace bad characters in filenames within all sub-directories. However due to limitation of rename-item with '[' (wild cards) I have to use the
-LiteralPath in the command. This means I'm having issues with running this with sub-directories.
The code below works on current directory, but I cannot work out how to adapt this code to rename files within all sub-directories. Please help?
ls *.* -recurse | % { Move-Item -literalpath $_.fullname `
($_.name -replace "[()\[\]]|\.(?!\w{3}$)", " ") }
Your RegEx will remove the dot's from extensions with not exactly 3 chars.
.h
.cs
.html
I suggest replacing in BaseName and append the extension and only if brackets/parentheses/dots chars are present.
Get-ChildItem *.* -Recurse -File|
Where-Object {$_.BaseName -match '[()\[\]\.]'}|
Rename-Item -NewName {($_.BaseName -replace '[()\[\]\.]',' ')+$_.Extension} -Whatif
Remove the -WhatIf if the output looks OK.

File with no extension not changing on powershell

I have the following code:
Get-ChildItem . *. | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace 'line21','line21.map52'}
producing this error:
file: line21 is currently of type File (No extension).
When trying to change it to another extension it does not change.
However for the same scenario, it works perfectly fine if I took another file:
Get-ChildItem . *. | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace 'line22.txt','line22.map52'}
This behavior is happening, because your Get-ChildItem command is only retrieving files/folders whose names match *.. The file name "line21" does not match *. so it is being excluded.
Change your command to this:
Get-ChildItem -Path . -Include * | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace 'line21','line21.map52'};