How to prevent PowerShell -Recurse from renaming first file twice? - powershell

Question

When using powershell to rename files with their directory name and file name, my code works, except in the first file in a directory, it gives it two copies of the directory name. So the file book1.xlsx in folder folder1 should become folder1book1.xlsx but it becomes folder1folder1book1.xlsx. The remaining files in folder1 are correctly named folder1book2.xlsx, folder1book3.xlsx, etc.
I have a directory, with many sub-directories. In each sub-dir are files that need their sub-dir name added in.
I've been following this code. For me it looks like:
dir -Filter *.xlsx -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + "_" + $_.Name}
I've also tried
--setting the Recurse -Depth 1 so that it doesn't keep looking for folders in the sub-folders.
--using ForEach-Object {$_ | ... after the pipe, similar to this.
--running it in Visual Studio Code rather than directly in PowerShell, which turns it into:
Get-ChildItem "C:\my\dir\here" -Filter *.xls -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.DirectoryName + '_' + $_.Name}
--putting an empty folder inside the sub-directory, setting -Depth 2 to see if that will "catch" the recurse loop
I would expect the files to be named folder1_book1.xlsx, folder1_book2.xlsx, folder1_book3.xlsx.
But all of the attempted changes above give the same result. The first file is named folder1_folder1_book1.xlsx [INCORRECT], folder1_book2.xlsx[CORRECT], folder1_book3.xlsx[CORRECT].
A workaround might be writing an if statement for "not files that contain the sub-directory name" as suggested here. But the link searches for a text string not an object (probably not the correct term) like #_.Directory.Name. This post shows how to concatenate objects but not something like #_.Directory.Name. Having to put in an if statement seems like an unnecessary step if -Recurse worked the way it should, so I'm not sure this workaround gets at the heart of the issue.
I'm running windows 10 with bootcamp on a 2018 iMac (I'm in Windows a lot because I use ArcMap). Powershell 5.1.17134.858. Visual Studio Code 1.38.0. This is a task I would like to learn how to use more in the future, so explanations will help. I'm new to using PowerShell. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This was a script I created for one of my customers that may help
<##################################################################################################################################
This script can be used to search through folders to rename files from their
original name to "filename_foldername.extension". To use this script
please configure the items listed below.
Items to Congfigure
-$Original
-$Source
-$Destination
-$Files
Also please change the Out-File date on line 29 to today's date ****Example: 2019-10-02****
We've also added a change log file that is named "FileChange.txt" and can be found in the location identified on line 30
>
$Original="C:\temp\test" #Location of ".cab" files copied
$Source="C:\temp\Test" #Location were ".cab" files are stored
$Destination="C:\temp\Test\2019-10-02" #Location were you want to copy ".cab" files after the file name change. Be sure to change the date to the date you run this script. The script creates a folder with todays date
$Files=#("*.cab") #Choose the file type you want to search for
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue" #Suppress Errors
Get-ChildItem $Original -Include "*.cab" -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.BaseName+"_"+$_.Directory.Name +'.cab'}
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path ".\$((Get-Date).ToString('yyyy-MM-dd'))"; Get-ChildItem -recurse ($Source) -include ($Files) | Copy-Item -Destination ($Destination) -EA SilentlyContinue
Get-ChildItem $Original | Where {$_.LastWriteTime -ge [datetime]::Now.AddMinutes(-10)} | Out-File C:\temp\test\2019-10-02\FileChange.txt