Remove recursively "_v1" from files in multipe sub folders - powershell

I have multiple files stored in folders and subfolders. Almost all of them contain _v1 at the end of the BaseName. I tried the following but I'm getting an error.
Get-ChildItem -Recurse * -Filter "/(_v1)/" |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '/(_v1)/','' } -WhatIf
Error:
Get-ChildItem : Second path fragment must not be a drive or UNC name.

Try this :
Get-ChildItem "C:\test\ " -recurse -Filter "*_V1*" | % { Rename-Item $_ -NewName $($_.Name -replace "_V1","" ) }

PowerShell isn't Perl. Forward slashes don't indicate a regular expression, they're just literal forward slashes, so neither your filter expression nor your search string will match the intended files. Also, the parentheses (i.e. the capturing group) serve no purpose, so you should remove them.
Use a wildcard pattern as the filter string for Get-ChildItem and apply the regular expression replacement to the basename to avoid unintentional replacements of _v1 elsewhere in the file names.
Get-ChildItem -Filter '*_v1.*' -Recurse |
Rename-Item -NewName { ($_.BaseName -replace '_v1$') + $_.Extension }
If you're running at least PowerShell v3 you can add the parameter -File to Get-ChildItem so that it won't return directories.

Related

Rename a folder using part of a certain filename inside the folder

I have a number of folders with a similar set of files. Each folder contains a file, among others, with filename in a certain pattern, e.g., "Result_XYZ.txt". So this file will have a unique XYZ part in each of the folders. I want to rename each of the folders using XYZ part of that specific file. Finally there are many such folders, so I'll need to do a batch rename.
It looks like a reverse task from 1, although I can't figure out how to solve my problem.
Thank you in advance!
Clarification, thanks to Keith:
I need to add that the specific filename I need to use contains several '_' symbols and a '-' symbol, so the filenames look like:
Some Result_123_ABC_A1B2_XYZ-M1.txt
So the part that I need for folder name is '123_ABC_A1B2_XYZ-M1'.
I'm trying to parse it like below but I'm only getting the last part '-M1'. Not quite familiar how to handle '_' in this case:
(Get-ChildItem -Path $Parent -Filter "Some Result_*.txt" -File -Recurse) | ForEach-Object{
Rename-Item -Path $_.DirectoryName -NewName $_.BaseName.Split('Some Result_')[-1] -whatIf
}
Assuming a simple structure such as:
C:\...\PARENT
├───folder1
│ Some Result_XYZ.txt
│
├───folder2
│ Some Result_ABC.txt
│
└───folder3
Some Result_DEF.txt
The following would work:
$Parent = 'c:\...\Parent'
(Get-ChildItem -Path $Parent -Filter 'Some Result_*.txt' -File -Recurse) | ForEach-Object{
Rename-Item -Path $_.DirectoryName -NewName $_.BaseName.Split('_')[-1] -whatIf
}
Note that the above Rename-Item has the -WhatIf switch specified so it can be safely tested. Remove the -WhatIf switch once you've verified the correct folders will be renamed.
Taking advantage of aliases and positional parameters, the above can be shortened to:
$Parent = 'c:\...\Parent'
(gci $Parent 'Some Result_*.txt' -af -s) | %{
ren $_.DirectoryName $_.BaseName.Split('_')[-1] -whatIf
}
Edit: Based on clarification
The following will extract everything after the first underscore in the filename:
$Parent = 'c:\...\Parent'
(Get-ChildItem -Path $Parent -Filter 'Some Result_*.txt' -File -Recurse) | ForEach-Object{
Rename-Item -Path $_.DirectoryName -NewName ($_.BaseName -replace '^.+?_') -whatIf
}
The -replace operator uses regulare expressions for matching. The match string specifies:
^ - Match must start at the beginning of the string
.+ - Match a sequence of one or more characters with the exception of <NewLine>
? - "Lazy" quantifier (matching stops at first underscore. Without this, everything up the last underscore would be matched)
_ - Literal underscore
References:
RegEx Cheat Sheet
-Replace operator

How do I recursively rename files in a directory with Powershell?

I have a powershell script which appends " - Confidential" to the end of files that don't already match the string "Confidential" within the filename. When running this script in the directory, it works. However, I need it to rename all the items within the subfolder too. How could I achieve this?
Get-ChildItem * -Exclude *Confidential* -Recurse |
ForEach {Rename-Item -NewName { $_.BaseName + " - Confidential" + $_.Extension }}
Thanks all for reading.
You're close, but there's a few problems:
Rename-Item is missing the original file, so let's add $_ to it. We could have also given it $_.FullName but I'm just passing the entire object to it.
Rename-Item is being given a script block with no input for -NewName because you've used curly braces ({}), so we change it to regular brackets (()).
Subfolders are also being renamed, which also results in files in them not being recursed (because they contain Confidential), so we specify the -File switch on Get-ChildItem to only return files.
So that brings us to this:
Get-ChildItem * -File -Exclude *Confidential* -Recurse |
ForEach {Rename-Item $_ -NewName ( $_.BaseName + " - Confidential" + $_.Extension )}
And just some cleanup/optimisation:
Remove wildcard (*) from Get-ChildItem. It already assumes all items in the folder you're in.
Enclose string in quote marks.
Add some spaces inside script block and change ForEach alias to shorter % alias (both just my personal preference).
And the final result looks like this:
Get-ChildItem -File -Exclude "*Confidential*" -Recurse |
% { Rename-Item $_ -NewName ( $_.BaseName + " - Confidential" + $_.Extension ) }
As always, you can do a dry run by specifying -WhatIf on Rename-Item, just in case there's some unexpected behaviour.
Edit: You could actually just pipe the output of Get-ChildItem into Rename-Item like so without the need for ForEach-Object:
Get-ChildItem -File -Exclude "*Confidential*" -Recurse |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.BaseName + " - Confidential" + $_.Extension }

Skipping files with a given prefix when renaming

I have the following script for renaming a bunch of files in a directory, adding the name of the directory to the start of them:
$s = "Y:\Teknisk Arkiv\Likeretter 111-Å1\E2_Kretsskjema\02_Likeretter styring\3AJJ000302-222"
Get-ChildItem -Path $s -Exclude $_.Directory.Name* | rename-item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name + '_' + $_.Name }
Before running the script the files in the folder looks something like this
after like this
As you can see it does more or less what I want, except that -exclude $_.DirectoryName* doesn't prevent files which already have the foldername as a prefix from being renamed. What am I doing wrong here?
$_ in a pipeline is only defined inside a script block used in a non-initial pipeline segment, where it refers to the input object at hand, so in your Get-ChildItem command it is effectively undefined.
Even if $_.Directory.Name did have a value, $_.Directory.Name* wouldn't work as expected, because it would be passed as 2 arguments (you'd have to use "$($_.Directory.Name)*" or ($_.Directory.Name + '*').
You instead want to extract the directory name from the $s input path, which you can do with Split-Path -Leaf, and then append '*'.
In order for -Exclude to be effective, the input path must end in \*, because -Include and -Exclude filters - perhaps surprisingly - operate on the leaf component of the -Path argument, not on the child paths (unless -Recurse is also specified).
To put it all together:
Get-Item -Path $s\* -Exclude ((Split-Path -Leaf $s) + '*') |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name + '_' + $_.Name }
I've switched to Get-Item, since \* is now being used to enumerate the children, but Get-ChildItem would work too.
The $_ is only valid when it is used on the right-side of a pipeline meaning when you have a collection of items and "pipe" them through the "$_" would represent the current item.
Since the directory name you want excluded is static you can just hardcode it and use as your exclude filter.
$s = "Y:\Teknisk Arkiv\Likeretter 111-Å1\E2_Kretsskjema\02_Likeretter styring\3AJJ000302-222"
$exclude_filter = "3AJJ000302-222*"
Get-ChildItem -Path $s -Exclude $exclude_filter | rename-item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name + '_' + $_.Name }
Also try to use "-whatif" with rename-item so you know what will happen before it happens.
$_ represents the currently processed item, what requires a ForEach-Object or a scriptblock inside a pipe, not present at the begin of your command.
Solution make the path a FileInfoObject and use -Exclude
$s = Get-Item "Y:\Teknisk Arkiv\Likeretter 111-Å1\E2_Kretsskjema\02_Likeretter styring\3AJJ000302-222"
Get-ChildItem -Path $s -Exclude "$($s.Name)*"|Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name+'_'+$_.Name}
solution use a Where-Object to filter files already starting with the directory name
Get-ChildItem -Path $s | Where-Object {$_.Directory.Name -notlike "$($_.Name)*"} |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name + '_' + $_.Name }
Solution use the RegEx based -replace operator to prepend the directory name and use a negative lookahead assertion to exclude files which already have it.
Get-ChildItem -Path $s |
Rename-Item -NewName {$x=$_.Directory.Name;$_.Name -replace "^(?!$x)",$x}

How to Rename Using Powershell

How to rename bunch of files in windows using powershell.
Example of filenames:
Image001 L#ter
Image002 L#ter
I have tried these two commands ,
get-childitem * | ForEach { Move-Item -LiteralPath $_.name $_.name.Replace("L#ter","")}
get-childitem * | ForEach { rename-item $_ $_.Name.Replace("L#ter","") }
I expect the output to be as Image001,Image002
Your question says to rename, but your code samples are using the Move-Item command. I am going to assume you were unsure hot to rename them correctly as you weren't actually moving them.
Get-ChildItem "C:\Temp\" -File | ForEach-Object {
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName "$($_.Name -replace '\s*(l#ster)')"
}
The \s* will match any whitespace before your main capturing group
The (l#ster) is the main capture group, it looks for that exact phrase and will match it.
This is a frequent category of question. I like to use rename-item with a scriptblock. Take off the -whatif if it looks right. I'm assuming you don't want the space at the end of the names.
ls '* l#ter' | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace ' l#ter' } -whatif
first, some small details about your commands:
get-childitem * | ForEach { Move-Item -LiteralPath $_.name $_.name.Replace("L#ter","")}
LiteralPath is meant to be used used exactly as it is typed. So I would use it with
$.FullName instead of $.name if I must use strange paths (like network shares).
second:
In the get-help for both move-item and rename-item I can see that the -path parameter :
Required? true
Position? 0
Default value None
Accept pipeline input? True (ByPropertyName, ByValue)
which means that we can pipe a collection of objects into it and the rename cmdlet will automatically pass through the collection :
Get-ChildItem -Path 'c:\tests\' -File -Recurse | Rename-Item -NewName ($_.name -replace ' l#ter') -Force -WhatIf
I have made this reply redundant for Drew's and Js2010's replys, but, as I am a beginner in powershell, I find easier to understand the answers with full commands.

Filenames matching regex but in folder with wildcard

This is a follow up question of: PowerShell concatenate output of Get-ChildItem
This code works fine:
Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\Wim\TM1\TI processes" -Filter "*.vue" -Recurse -File |
Where-Object { $_.BaseName -match '^[0-9]+$' } |
ForEach-Object { ($_.FullName -split '\\')[-2,-1] -join '\' } |
Out-File D:\wim.txt
But I would need to restrict the search folder to only certain folders, basically, this filter: D:\Wim\TM1\TI processes\\*}vues (so all subfolders ending in }vues).
If I add that wildcard condition I get no result. Without the restriction, I get the correct result. Is this possible please?
The idea is to get rid of the 3rd line in the first output (which was a copy/paste by me) and also to minimize the number of folders to look at.
You can nest two Get-ChildItem calls:
An outer Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse call to filter directories of interest first,
an inner Get-ChildItem -File call that, for each directory found, examines and processes the files of interest.
Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\Wim\TM1\TI processes" -Filter "*}vues" -Recurse -Directory |
ForEach-Object {
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $_.FullName -Filter "*.vue" -File |
Where-Object { $_.BaseName -match '^[0-9]+$' } |
ForEach-Object { ($_.FullName -split '\\')[-2,-1] -join '\' }
} | Out-File D:\wim.txt
Note: The assumption is that all *.vue files of interest are located directly in each *}vues folder.
As for what you tried:
Given that you're limiting items being enumerated to files (-File), your directory-name wildcard pattern *}vues never gets to match any directory names and, in the absence of files matching that pattern, returns nothing.
Generally, with -Recurse it is conceptually cleaner not to append the wildcard pattern directly to the -Path argument, so as to better signal that the pattern will be matched in every directory in the subtree.
In your case you would have noticed your attempt to filter doubly, given that you're also using the -Filter parameter.