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.
Related
Okay so a bit of a weird one but I have files with names like file_ytd.test.dds, file2_ytd.test.dds, file3_ytd.test.dds, file_ytd.notatest.dds
and I want to rename them so that they are
test.dds, notatest.dss
and of course it removes the duplicates I wanted to use this command in powershell, but I would need to manually type out the full name for each "file_ytd." type, and I have about 100k different variations in 400k files
``` Dir | rename-item -NewName {$_.name -replace "file_ytd." ""} ```
What would be the best way about this?
If I'm understanding correclty, t his would do the trick.
-WhatIf parameter added to both Rename-Item and Remove-Item so you can see if it's doing what you want.
Get-ChildItem |
select fullName , #{N='NewName';E={$_.BaseName.Split('.')[-1]+$_.Extension}} |
group NewName | foreach {
Rename-Item -Path $_.Group[0].FullName -NewName $_.Name -WhatIf
If ($_.Count -gt 1)
{
$_.Group[1..($_.Count -1)].FullName | Remove-Item -WhatIf
}
}
Hello I would like to know is there a way to replace multiple filenames from parent folder?
I was able to rename multiple files using command below, but I have to access each folder first to rename multiple files.
dir .\* -include ('*.mp4','*.srt') | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\[','' -replace '\]','' }
I was trying to replace dir .\* to dir .\**\* to select from parent folder but didn't work.
What am I missing?
You can do that by adding the -Recurse switch to Get-ChildItem (dir is alias to Get-ChildItem).
When searching for files that contain square brackets, you need to use the -LiteralPath parameter.
Also, be aware that there is a snag if you pipe the results from that directly to Rename-Item..
When doing so, Get-ChildItem may pick up the already processed files again, wasting time of course, so to prevent that you can either do:
$rootFolder = 'X:\WhereTheFilesAre'
(Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $rootFolder -Include '*.mp4','*.srt' -File -Recurse) |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\[|]' }
or
$rootFolder = 'X:\WhereTheFilesAre'
$files = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $rootFolder -Include '*.mp4','*.srt' -File -Recurse
foreach ($file in $files) {
$file | Rename-Item -NewName { $file.Name -replace '\[|]' }
}
In additional to marsze's concise answer and realizing this isn't really a performance question:
-Include is much slower than -Filter because it filters after retrieving from the file system. Whereas, -Filter has the file system do the heavy lifting. In essence -Filter is a nuanced version of moving filtering operations left in the command/pipeline to improve performance. However, -Filter doesn't take multiple values! That said, you may still be able to exploit this characteristic using a loop, something like:
'*.mp4','*.srt' |
ForEach-Object{
Get-ChildItem .\ -Filter $_ -File
} |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\[|\]' }
-File works even though you are using -Recurse and may carry a modest performance improvement. I also shortened the -replace to 1 operation which can only help further.
What you probably want is the -Recurse switch:
dir "the folder" -Recurse -Include ('*.mp4','*.srt')
Note that this will recurse all levels of subdirectories.
I just found out I could use dir . to select all files (with specific file types), including files in subdirectories.
dir . -Recurse -Include ('*.srt', '*.mp4') | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\[|\]','' }
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}
I am trying to remove blank spaces from many file names using PowerShell 3.0. Here is the code that I am working with:
$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\PowershellTests\With_Space"
Copy-Item $Files.FullName -Destination C:\PowershellTests\Without_Space
Set-Location -Path C:\PowershellTests\Without_Space
Get-ChildItem *.txt | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace ' ','' }
For example: the With_Space directory has these files:
Cable Report 3413109.pdf
Control List 3.txt
Test Result Phase 2.doc
The Without_Space directory will need the above file name to be:
CableReport3413109.pdf
ControlList3.txt
TestResultPhase 2.doc
Currently, the script shows no error but it only copies the source files to the destination folder, but doesn't remove the spaces in file names.
Your code should work just fine, but since Get-ChildItem *.txt lists only .txt files the last statement should remove the spaces from just the text files, giving you a result like this:
Cable Report 3413109.pdf
ControlList3.txt
Test Result Phase 2.doc
This should remove spaces from the names of all files in the folder:
Get-ChildItem -File | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace ' ','' }
Prior to PowerShell v3 use this to restrict processing to just files:
Get-ChildItem | Where-Object { -not $_.PSIsContainer } |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace ' ','' }
something like this could work
$source = 'C:\temp\new'
$dest = 'C:\temp\new1'
Get-ChildItem $source | % {copy $_.FullName $(join-path $dest ($_.name -replace ' '))}
I think your script should almost work, except $_ isn't going to be defined as anything. By using the for-each cmdlet (%), you assign it and then can use it.
Get-ChildItem *.txt | %{Rename-Item -NewName ( $_.Name -replace ' ','' )}
EDIT:
That interpretation was totally wrong. Some people seem to have found it useful, but as soon as you have something being piped, it appears that $_ references the object currently in the pipe. My bad.
I have no problem adding sequential prefixes to filenames. The following works great on the top directory in question.
$path="E:\path\newtest1"
$count=4000
Get-ChildItem $path -recurse | Where-Object {!$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.Name -NotMatch '^\d{4}\s+'} | ForEach -Process {Rename-Item $_ -NewName ("$count " + $_.name -f $count++) -whatif}
BUT if there are files in subfolders within the top directory, these are all completely missed. Whatif reports that for any deeper file it "does not exist".
I have tried the following, based on looking at some pages on other recursion problems, but as you can probably guess I have no clue what it is doing. Whatif shows that it does at least pickup and rename all the files. But the following does it too much and makes multiple copies of each file with each number:
$path="E:\path\newtest1"
$count=4000
Get-ChildItem -recurse | ForEach-Object { Get-ChildItem $path | Rename-item -NewName ("$count " + $_.Basename -f $count++) -whatif}
Really keen to get some guidance on how to get the first of these two snippets to work to find all files in all subdirectories and rename them with sequential number prepended.
Try it like so:
Get-ChildItem $path -recurse -file | Where Name -NotMatch '^\d{4}\s+' |
Rename-Item -NewName {"{0} $($_.name)" -f $count++} -whatif
When you supply $_ as an argument (not a pipeline object), that gets assigned to the Path parameter which is of type string. PowerShell tries to convert that FileInfo object to a string but unfortunately the "ToString()" representation of files in nested folders is just the filename and not the full path. You can see this by executing:
Get-ChildItem $path -recurse -file | Where Name -NotMatch '^\d{4}\s+' | ForEach {"$_"}
The solution is either to A) pipe the object into Rename-Item or B) use the FullName property e.g. Rename-Item -LiteralPath $_.FullName ....