Output results to text file - powershell

Question

Thanks to #Theo yesterday I got my script to work and do exactly all the things I wanted. So now have a lovely menu system, options etc.
But I've decided - like a charm I wanted to do a little more!
So part of what is happening is finding files and renaming them. Theo's example was best:
D:\The Old Man and his dog.mp4 → D:\Old Man and his dog (The).mp4
D:\A Nightmare on Elm Street.mp4 → D:\Nightmare on Elm Street (A).mp4
D:\I, Robot.mkv → D:\Robot (I).mkv
What I wanted to do is change from output to screen the results. To a log file of changes made, and preferably update the file and add or make a new log file every time the script runs. Just in case I ever need to find something or check what happened - I've got something to refer back to!
Below is the code I've used but not to happy with to display the results.
Start-Sleep -s 5
cls
Write-Output "
Ok then, $filter and $rename has now been searched and changed.
With a total of
(Get-ChildItem | ? {$_.CreationTime -ge (Get-Date).Addminutes(-10)}).Count
Write-Output "files being changed.
"
pause
cls}
I would like to get a better display result, i.e.
xx Files have been successfully update
xx Files failed.
Please see log for details.
And then look in the log file and see something like:
Log1.txt:
D:\The Old Man and his dog.mp4 successfully Changed to D:\Old Man and his dog (The).mp4
Total of 1 /1 files successfully changed
I'm thinking of Compare-Object and Out-File, so maybe
Compare-Object $(Get-Content c:\user\documents\List1.txt) $(Get-Content c:\user\documents\List2.txt) > c:\user\documents\diff_output.txt
But for some reason I cannot get my head around this idea and figure out where to start.

Answer 1

If I understand the requirements correctly, extending on my previous code, you could do this:
$rootFolder = 'D:\' #'# the root folder where the files and subfolders are
$logFile = 'D:\renamed_{0:yyyy-MM-dd HH_mm_ss}.txt' -f (Get-Date) #'# the file to log to, including the current date
# create an array of words that start the file name and should be moved towards the back
$words = 'The', 'i', 'a'
# create a regex pattern where all possible words are separated by the regex OR (|) sign
$re = '^({0})[ ,]+' -f ($words -join '|')
# create two integer counter variables
[int]$success, [int]$failed = 0
Get-ChildItem -Path $rootFolder | Where-Object { $_.Name -match $re } | ForEach-Object {
$newName = '{0} ({1}){2}' -f ($_.BaseName -replace $re), $matches[1], $_.Extension
try {
$_ | Rename-Item -NewName $newName -ErrorAction Stop -WhatIf
Add-Content -Path $logFile -Value "Successfully renamed '$($_.FullName)' to '$newName'"
$success++
}
catch {
Add-Content -Path $logFile -Value "Rename failed for file '$($_.FullName)'"
$failed++
}
}
# write summary
$total = $success + $failed
$summary = "Total of $success / $total files successfully changed`r`nTotal of $failed / $total files failed"
# output summary to the log file
Add-Content -Path $logFile -Value "`r`n==========================================================="
Add-Content -Path $logFile -Value $summary
# output summary on screen
Write-Host "`r`n$summary`r`nPlease see '$logFile' for details." -ForegroundColor Yellow
Using the same three examples will output this on screen:
Total of 3 / 3 files successfully changed
Total of 0 / 3 files failed
Please see 'D:\renamed_2019-09-18 12_07_01.txt' for details.
and the log file will contain:
Successfully renamed 'D:\A Nightmare on Elm Street.mp4' to 'Nightmare on Elm Street (A).mp4'
Successfully renamed 'D:\I, Robot.mkv' to 'Robot (I).mkv'
Successfully renamed 'D:\The Old Man and his dog.mp4' to 'Old Man and his dog (The).mp4'
===========================================================
Total of 3 / 3 files successfully changed
Total of 0 / 3 files failed