Currently I'am facing an issue in renaming file names with powershell. I'am actually able to rename files in a particular folder, however if the structure is different the command fails.
Example files:
test file - 1234 - copy.docx
test file - 1234.pdf
I was running the following command:
Get-ChildItem <location> -file | foreach {
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName ($_.Name.Split("-")[0] + $_.Extension) }
I want to keep the filename before the last "-". But if I run my command, I always get file name before the first "-".
Any advice for a better approach?
Most straightforward approach:
Get-ChildItem <location> -File | Rename-Item -NewName {
$index = $_.BaseName.LastIndexOf("-")
if ($index -ge 0) {
$_.BaseName.Substring(0, $index).Trim() + $_.Extension
}
else { $_.Name }
}
Regex replace:
Get-ChildItem <location> -File |
Rename-Item -NewName {($_.BaseName -replace '(.*)-.*', '$1').Trim() + $_.Extension}
You could use RegEx to achieve the desired output:
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName (($_.Name -replace '(.*)-.*?$','$1') + $_.Extension) }
(.*)-.*?$ selects all chars (greedy) until the last - before the end of the line.
Related
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" + $_.Extension }
I am trying to rename a whole lot of files all located in one folder but in different subfolders. The files should be renamed so that their name consists of the foldername + the original file name. I am wondering if you could add a conditional statements so that the file name doesn't change if the file name already contains the folder name. The code below performs the function of renaming the files but doesn't contain the if statement.
dir -recurse | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + " - " + $_.Name}
The code below is an example on how I imagine the code would look:
dir -recurse | if($_.Name -contains $_.Directory.Name) {Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + " - " + $_.Name}}
This should do it:
$rootFolder = 'D:\test'
Get-ChildItem -Path $rootFolder -File -Recurse | ForEach-Object {
$folder = $_.Directory.Name
if (!($_.Name.StartsWith($folder))) { $_ | Rename-Item -NewName ('{0} - {1}' -f $folder, $_.Name) }
}
Theo's answer works well, but there's an alternative that is both conceptually simpler and performs noticeably better:
You can take advantage of the fact that passing an unchanged file name to -NewName is a quiet no-op, so you can place all your logic in the -NewName script block:
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse |
Rename-Item -NewName {
if ($_.Name -like ($_.Directory.Name + ' - *') { # already renamed
$_.Name # no change
}
else { # rename
$_.Directory.Name ' - ' + $_.Name
}
} -WhatIf
-WhatIf previews the renaming operation; remove it to perform actual renaming.
Rather than using ForEach-Object call with a nested Rename-Item call in its script block - which means that Rename-Item is called once for each input file - this solution uses a single pipeline with a single Rename-Item invocation, where the new name (if changed) is determined via a delay-bind script block - see this answer for details.
I was trying it in a way close to the way the question was asked. I wish I didn't have to add another foreach.
dir -recurse -file | & {
foreach ($i in $input) {
if(-not ($i.Name.contains($i.Directory.Name))) {
Rename-Item $i.fullname -NewName ($i.Directory.Name + ' - ' + $i.Name) -whatif
}
}
}
Or like this
dir -recurse -file | % {
if(-not ($_.Name.contains($_.Directory.Name))) {
Rename-Item $_.fullname -NewName ($_.Directory.Name + ' - ' + $_.Name) -whatif
}
}
I try to rename in batch files in multiple folders by removing - .extension
Example files:
test file 1 - 1234.docx
test file 1 - 4321.docx
test file 1 - 6789.docx
For this I run the following script:
Get-ChildItem -recurse -exclude .dxl | foreach {
Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName (($_.BaseName -replace '(.)-.*?$','$1') + $_.Extension) }
This will give me the following error:
"Rename-Item : Cannot create a file when that file already exists."
How can I get rid of this by adding (1), (2), (3) if the file already exist after renaming?
Here is something I came up with for this problem:
$FileTracker = #{}
$files = (Get-ChildItem -recurse -exclude "*.dxl" -file | sort fullname).fullname
$files | foreach {
$Base = (($_ | select-string -pattern "(.*)-.*?$").matches.groups[1].value).Trim()
if ($FileTracker[$Base]) {
Rename-Item -path $_ -newName ((split-Path $Base -Leaf),"($($FileTracker[$Base]))",($_ -replace ".*(\..*?)$",'$1') -join "")
$FileTracker[$Base]++
}
else {
$FileTracker.add($Base,1)
Rename-Item -path $_ -newName ((split-path $Base -Leaf),($_ -replace ".*(\..*?)$",'$1') -join "")
}
}
Keep in mind that this solution looks to make files unique in their respective directories. If it sees test file 1 - 23.txt in two different directories, it will rename them both to test file 1.txt. If you already have files that have been renamed like testfile 1(1).txt and testfile 1(2).txt, there will be issues with this working. So I need to know if that is a condition.
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 am trying to rename a bunch of files recursively using Powershell 2.0. The directory structure looks like this:
Leaflets
+ HTML
- File1
- File2
...
+ HTMLICONS
+ IMAGES
- Image1
- Image2
- File1
- File2
...
+ RTF
- File1
- File2
...
+ SGML
- File1
- File2
...
I am using the following command:
get-childitem Leaflets -recurse | rename -newname { $_.name.ToLower() }
and it seems to rename the files, but complains about the subdirectories:
Rename-Item : Source and destination path must be different.
I reload the data monthly using robocopy, but the directories do not change, so I can rename them by hand. Is there any way to get get-children to skip the subdirectories (like find Leaflets -type f ...)?
Thanks.
UPDATE: It appears that the problem is with files that are already all lower case. I tried changing the command to:
get-childitem Leaflets -recurse | if ($_.name -ne $_name.ToLower()) rename -newname { $_.name.ToLower() }
but now Powershell complains that if is not a cmdlet, function, etc.
Can I pipe the output of get-childitem to an if statement?
UPDATE 2: This works:
$files=get-childitem Leaflets -recurse
foreach ($file in $files)
{
if ($file.name -ne $file.name.ToLower())
{
rename -newname { $_.name.ToLower() }
}
}
Even though you have already posted your own answer, here is a variation:
dir Leaflets -r | % { if ($_.Name -cne $_.Name.ToLower()) { ren $_.FullName $_.Name.ToLower() } }
Some points:
dir is an alias for Get-ChildItem (and -r is short for -Recurse).
% is an alias for ForEach-Object.
-cne is a case-sensitive comparison. -ne ignores case differences.
$_ is how you reference the current item in the ForEach-Object loop.
ren is an alias for Rename-Item.
FullName is probably preferred as it ensures you will be touching the right file.
If you wanted to excludes directories from being renamed, you could include something like:
if ((! $_.IsPsContainer) -and $_.Name -cne $_.Name.ToLower()) { ... }
Hopefully this is helpful in continuing to learn and explore PowerShell.
Keep in mind that you can pipe directly to Rename-Item and use Scriptblocks with the -NewName parameter (because it also accepts pipeline input) to simplify this task:
Get-ChildItem -r | Where {!$_.PSIsContainer} |
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.FullName.ToLower()}
and with aliases:
gci -r | ?{!$_.PSIsContainer} | rni -New {$_.FullName.ToLower()}
There are many issues with the previous given answers due to the nature of how Rename-Item, Piping, Looping and the Windows Filesystem works. Unfortunatly the the most simple (not using aliases for readability here) solution I found to rename all files and folders inside of a given folder to lower-case is this one:
Get-ChildItem -Path "/Path/To/You/Folder" -Recurse | Where{ $_.Name -cne $_.Name.ToLower() } | ForEach-Object { $tn="$($_.Name)-temp"; $tfn="$($_.FullName)-temp"; $nn=$_.Name.ToLower(); Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName $tn; Rename-Item -Path $tfn -NewName $nn -Force; Write-Host "New Name: $($nn)";}
slight tweak on this, if you only want to update the names of files of a particular type try this:
get-childitem *.jpg | foreach { if ($_.Name -cne $_.Name.ToLower()) { ren $_.FullName $_.Name.ToLower() } }
this will only lowercase the jpg files within your folder and ignore the rest
You need to temporarily rename them to something else then name them back all lower case.
$items = get-childitem -Directory -Recurse
foreach ($item in $items)
{
if ($item.name -eq $item.name.ToLower())
{
$temp = $item.FullName.ToLower() + "_"
$name = $item.FullName.ToLower()
ren $name $temp
ren $temp $name
}
It's more idomatic in PowerShell to use where instead of if in a pipeline:
gci -Recurse Leaflets |
? { $_.Name -ne $_.Name.ToLower()) } |
% { ren -NewName $_.Name.ToLower() }
A small but important correction to the answer from Jay Bazuzi. The -cne (case sensitive not equal) operator must be used if the where-part should return anything.
Additionally I found that the Path parameter needed to be present. This version worked in my setup:
gci -Recurse |
? { $_.Name -cne $_.Name.ToLower() } |
% { ren $_.Name -NewName $_.Name.Tolower() }
for everyone who is following this thread; the following line can also be used to lower both files and directories.
Get-ChildItem -r | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.ToLower().Insert(0,'_') } -PassThru | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.Substring(1) }
Main post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/70559621/4165074