I've been working on a script to maintain the archive from my IP camera DVR. My recording software outputs filenames formatted so that the first character is the camera number, followed by a date and time stamp.
ex. 1_2017-11-03_00-45-07.avi
I want to replace the first character with a string that represents the camera.
ex. DivertCam_2017-11-03_00-45-07.avi
So far, I have:
Get-ChildItem "D:\DivertCam\1_*.avi" |
Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '1_?','DivertCam_'}
Luckily with -WhatIfand running a transcript, I was able to see that my results would be wrong:
What if: Performing the operation "Rename File" on target "Item: D:\DivertCam\1_2017-11-03_00-45-07.avi Destination: D:\DivertCam\DivertCam_20DivertCam_7-DivertCam_DivertCam_-03_00-45-07.avi"
I know it's just picking out every "1_". How can I make it after the the first instance of "1_", or read the filename like a string, split it into 3 arrays separated by "_" and then change the first array?
The -replace operator performs a RegEx match and replacement, so you can use RegEx syntax to do what you want. For you the solution is to include the 'beginning of string' characater ^ at the beginning of your match text. Since this is RegEx, the ? means the previous character may or may not exist, so what you are currently matching on is any character matching '1' which may or may not be followed by an underscore. A better version would simply be:
$_.name -replace '^1','DivertCam'
To put that in context with the rest of your line, it would be:
Get-ChildItem "D:\DivertCam\1_*.avi" | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace '^1','DivertCam'}
Keep in mind this only works for the -replace operator which uses RegEx (short for Regular Expression) matching, and not the .Replace() method that you may see used, which uses simple pattern matching.
This will replace everything before the first '_' with 'DivertCam' (note use of % (foreach) to operate on each file individually).
Get-ChildItem "D:\DivertCam\1_*.avi" | % {Rename-Item $_.FullName -NewName "DivertCam$($_.Name.Substring($_.Name.IndexOf('_')))" }
Related
I am trying to extract two words from filenames. The names have the format:
__XXXXXXXX_XXX_XXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXXX_XXXX XXX_Aircraft 017_XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXX_XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXX-01Apr2021-XXXXX
With the X's being replaced with different words. I need to extract the aircraft number and the date so that I can rename the files with just that information. Using help from this site I have tried the following to isolate the aircraft number:
$names = gci -Path "H:\Path\to\Logs" *.log -Recurse | select #{n="Name"; e={if ($_.Name -match "Aircraft (\w+)") {
$matches[1] }}}
However, it doesn't seem to give me the match I need. However, I am very inexpert in programming and may be going down the wrong path. My hope is that the same logic used to isolate the aircraft number also applies for the date.
# Create a sample file.
$file = New-Item '__XXXXXXXX_XXX_XXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXXX_XXXX XXX_Aircraft 017_XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXX_XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXX-01Apr2021-XXXXX'
# Substitute your `Get-ChildItem` command for $file
$file |
Rename-Item -WhatIf -NewName {
if ($_.Name -match '_(Aircraft \w+?)_.+(\d{2}[a-z]{3}\d{4})-') {
# Synthesize the new file name from the extracted substrings.
'{0} - {1}' -f $Matches[1], $Matches[2]
} else {
# Input file name didn't match, (effectively) do nothing.
$_.Name
}
}
Note: The -WhatIf common parameter in the command above previews the operation. Remove -WhatIf once you're sure the operation will do what you want.
For an explanation of the regex used with the -match operator above, see this regex101.com page.[1]
The above uses two capture groups ((...)) to capture the substrings of interest, which can be accessed via indices 1 and 2 of the automatic $Matches variable.
-f, the format operator is then used to build the output file name from the captured substrings. Tweak the LHS format string as needed.
Thanks to -WhatIf, you'll see output such as the following, which is the preview of what would happen when you remove -WhatIf - note the new file name in the Destination: path:
What if: Performing the operation "Rename File" on target
"Item: /tmp/__XXXXXXXX_XXX_XXXXXXX_XXXX_XXXXX_XXXX XXX_Aircraft 017_XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXX_XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXX-01Apr2021-XXXXX
Destination: /tmp/Aircraft 017 - 01Apr2021".
Note how a script block ({ ... }) is passed as an argument to Rename-Item's -NewName parameter, which then acts on each input file via the automatic automatic $_ variable and outputs the argument value to use for the input object at hand. Such script blocks are called delay-bind script blocks.
[1] Note that even though regex101.com, a site for visualizing, explaining and experimenting with regexes, doesn't support the .NET regex engine used by PowerShell, choosing a similar engine, such as Java's, usually exhibits the same behavior, at least fundamentally.
How can I filter on the first underscore and the following period
Here is what I have so far but the file I'm receiving is changing, in some cases the original filename has an extra underscore. I need a way to account for that.
Get-ChildItem "\\MyFileServer\*" | Rename-Item -NewName { ($_.Name -replace '(?<=^.{3}).{5}', '.').Replace(".vfmpclmadj.", ".sa.") }
original filename
999_987895_888888_544P.44444.vfmpclmadj.000025001.20201216.175314
New filename
999.44444.sa.000025001.20201216.175314
Something like this should work.
('999_987895_888888_544P.44444.vfmpclmadj.000025001.20201216.175314' -replace '_.+?(?=\.)').Replace(".vfmpclmadj.", ".sa.")
It simply looks for an underscore plus any characters up to a period. You could make it more strict but for this example it wasn't needed. Something like this would also work but only on the first underscore. The former could potentially affect other underscores later in the string.
('999_987895_888888_544P.44444.vfmpclmadj.000025001.20201216.175314' -replace '(?<=^[^_]+)_.+?(?=\.)').Replace(".vfmpclmadj.", ".sa.")
I have a folder that contains files like 'goodthing 2007adsdfff.pdf', 'betterthing 2007adfdsw.pdf', and 'bestthing_2007fdsfad.pdf', I want to be able to rename each, eliminating all text including 2007 OR _2007 to the end of the string keeping .pdf and getting this result: 'goodthing.pdf' 'betterthing.pdf' 'bestthing.pdf' I've tried this with the "_2007", but haven't figured out a conditional to also handle the "2007". Any advice on how to accomplish this is greatly appreciated.
Get-ChildItem 'C:Temp\' -Name -Filter *.pdf | foreach { $_.Split("_2017")[0].substring(0)}
Try the following:
Get-ChildItem 'C:\Temp' -Name -Filter *.pdf |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '[_ ][^.]+' } -WhatIf
Note: The -WhatIf common parameter in the command above previews the operation. Remove -WhatIf once you're sure the operation will do what you want.
The above uses Rename-Item with a delay-bind script block and the -replace operator as follows:
Regex [_ ][^.]+ matches everything from the first space or _ char. (character set [ _]) through to the following literal . char. ([^.]+ matches one or more chars. other than (^) than .) - that is, everything from the first / _ through to the filename extension (excluding the .).
Note: To guard against file names such as _2017.pdf matching (which would result in just .pdf as the new name), use the following regex instead: '(?<=.)[_ ][^.]+'
By not providing a replacement operand to -replace, what is matched is replace with the empty string and therefore effectively removed.
The net effect is that input files named
'goodthing 2007adsdfff.pdf', 'betterthing 2007adfdsw.pdf', 'bestthing_2007fdsfad.pdf'
are renamed to
'goodthing.pdf', 'betterthing.pdf', 'bestthing.pdf'
Without knowing the names of all the potential files, I can offer this solution that is 100%:
PS> $flist = ("goodthing 2007adsdfff.pdf","betterthing 2007adfdsw.pdf","bestthing_2007fdsfad.pdf")
PS> foreach ($f in $flist) {$nicename = ($f -replace "([\w\s]+)2007.*(\.\w+)", '$1$2') -replace "[\s_].","." ;$nicename}
goodthing.pdf
betterthing.pdf
bestthing.pdf
Two challenges:
the underscore is actually part of the \w character class. So the alternative to the above is to complicate the regex or try to assume that there will always be only one '_' before the 2007. Both seemed risky to me.
if there are spaces in filenames, there is no telling if you might encounter more than one. This solution removes only the one right before 2007.
The magic:
The -replace operator enables you to quickly capture text in () and re-use it in variables like $1$2. If you have more complex captures, you just have to figure out the order they are assigned.
Hope this helps.
I have files look like
data.svg
map.svg
aplicationp.svg
...
*.svg
I am trying to add -b string to the end of all files names bu using power shell rename command like
D:\icons> Dir | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".","-b."}
to get these
data-b.svg
map-b.svg
application-b.svg
but this is not changing anything. How can I achieve this?
Powershell's -replace operator is based on regular expressions. And since . is a wildcard in regex, what should be happening is that each character in the file name is being replaced with the resulting string. So test.txt would become -b.-b.-b.-b.-b.-b.-b in your example.
You likely want to use the Replace method of the .NET String type like this instead.
dir | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.Replace('.','-b.') }
If you want to keep using -replace, you need to escape the . in your expression like this.
dir | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.','-b.' }
Both of these have a couple edge case problems that you may want to avoid. The first is narrowing the scope of your dir (which is just an alias for Get-ChildItem) to avoid including files or directories you don't actually want to rename. The second is that a simple replace in the file name doesn't account for file names that contain multiple dots. So you may want to ultimately do something like this if you only care about SVG files that may have multiple dots.
Get-ChildItem *.svg -File | Rename-Item -NewName { "$($_.BaseName)-b$($_.Extension)" }
The replace operator uses regex. Therefore your . needs to be escaped, otherwise it just stands for any character. I would generally make sure to be as specific as possible when writing regexes. The following is a possible solution
Get-ChildItem *.svg | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -Replace '\.svg$','-c.svg' }
The $ anchors the expression to the end of the string which makes sure it only changes the extension and not any other text inside the file names.
I am trying to rename files in multiple folder with same name structure. I got the following files:
(1).txt
(2).txt
(3).txt
I want to add the following text in front of it: "Subject is missing"
I only want to rename these files all other should remain the same
Tip of the hat to LotPings for suggesting the use of a look-ahead assertion in the regex.
Get-ChildItem -File | Rename-Item -NewName {
$_.Name -replace '^(?=\(\d+\)\.)', 'Subject is missing '
} -WhatIf
-WhatIf previews the renaming operation; remove it to perform actual renaming.
Get-ChildItem -File enumerates files only, but without a name filter - while you could try to apply a wildcard-based filter up front - e.g., -Filter '([0-9]).*' - you couldn't ensure that multi-digit names (e.g., (13).txt) are properly matched.
You can, however, pre-filter the results, with -Filter '(*).*'
The Rename-Item call uses a delay-bind script block to derive the new name.
It takes advantage of the fact that (a) -rename returns the input string unmodified if the regex doesn't match, (b) Rename-Item does nothing if the new filename is the same as the old.
In the regex passed to -replace, the positive look-ahead assertion (?=...) (which is matched at the start of the input string (^)) looks for a match for subexpression \(\d+\)\. without considering what it matches a part of what should be replaced. In effect, only the start position (^) of an input string is matched and "replaced".
Subexpression \(\d+\)\. matches a literal ( (escaped as \(), followed by 1 or more (+) digits (\d), followed by a literal ) and a literal . (\.), which marks the start of the filename extension. (Replace .\ with $, the end-of-input assertion if you want to match filenames that have no extension).
Therefore, replacement operand 'Subject is missing ' is effectively prepended to the input string so that, e.g., (1).txt returns Subject is missing (1).txt.