Windows File renaming question - NEW QUERY - see post #22

One of my colleagues has spent days creating a bunch of files, only to be told that they all need to contain not just the text description, but also the unique code of the item in question.

So presently the files are named:

Product_Description_A.pdf
Product_Description_B.pdf
Product_Description_C.pdf
etc.

The files should actually be called:

001248_Product_Description_A.pdf
003987_Product_Description_B.pdf
1124879_Product_Description_C.pdf
etc.

At present, we have a folder full of files with the incomplete filename, and a spreadsheet containing the correct filenames. Now I'm great at adding a single prefix/suffix to multiple files, there are a host of programs that will let you do that.

What I'm wondering is whether there is any simple way to merge/replace the existing filenames with the unique prefix values using some kind of lookup?

I suspect not, but if you don't ask you don't get.

We are in a Windows environment, and we are talking about several thousand files. It will be arduous, although I suspect necessary, if we have to manually append each file with the correct prefix.

 

This can certainly be automated.

What I'd do is either copy-and-paste or just export the relevant parts of the spreadsheet into a text file, and write a script (my preference is javascript, but many things could do it) to read that text file, then go through the filenames existing filenames and look up the new modified filename.

If you don't have anyone on hand who can do that, throw me a private message including (a small example of) the spreadsheet and some of the files.

P

 

In Linux it would be http://askubuntu.com/questions/438573/how-to-batch-rename-files-images-based-on-csv-file

For Windows something like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5183853/batch-to-find-file-copy-file-then-rename-file-from-a-csv maybe ?

 

...which is why I wouldn't do it in powershell!

 

Very sexy responses folks, and super appreciated. I'll have a pop at this tomorrow and let y'all know how it turns out!

Muchas gracias!

 

I do love this forum. It's great!

What I would highly recommend not doing is typing:

Code:

chmod * 444

It made everything go very wrong, and earned me the moniker of 'The CHMOD Kid...'

 

IIRC it is doable with powershell, but [again iirc since it's a while since I've had to do anything like that] it's a bit of a mare.

I'd probably go with Gareth's method with cygwin [also he's gone through the effort of demonstrating it working...], as for cygwin and case sensitivity I don't think it is by default... but i haven't used it in a while so don;t hold me to that...

 

Cygwin is going to make it rather complicated. I'd do it in jscript, which is already there and working.

 

If you have a single sheet that contains the correct file names in order you could simply output the list to a suitably formatted text file then use a tool like Bulk Rename Utility that can batch rename files from a list in a text file.

 

When I was into reading manga more I would download chapters that were named differently. I remember using batch renamers that were both free and useful. Perhaps that would help.

 

Gareth, your command executed flawlessly. Aside from a few manual fixes I had to make to the source data where symbols had been used in the file names, but that's to be expected with these things.

You are a lifesaver!

 

Late to the party, but here's the PowerShell for the task... it's not quite as short as Gareth's code but is native to Windows.

With "FileList.csv" containing old and new file names like so:

Code:

OldName,NewName
Product_Description_A.pdf,001248_Product_Description_A.pdf
Product_Description_B.pdf,003987_Product_Description_B.pdf
Product_Description_C.pdf,1124879_Product_Description_C.pdf

And the expanded easy to read code :

 

for those who want to play with powershell, I have found a cheat sheet for you here

 

It does slightly more than that...

It imports the CSV into a new blank array ($FileList) using the OldName field as key (thus [] brackets):
Then goes through each pdf file and renames only those that match an entry in the array.

If I'm reading your code correctly (with my limited knowledge):

Code:

xargs -I {} sh -c 'mv `echo {} | sed "s/,/\ /"`' < realnames.csv

I think the PS equivalent would be much simpler:

Code:

ipcsv ".\FileList.csv" | % {rni ".\$_.OldName" $_.NewName}

As it reads the csv natively and doesn't need to spawn a new shell for each action. It just deals with each rename sequentially within the single pipeline.

The simple code would raise an exception if there was not a file for each csv line entry (but would continue) which is why I prefer using an array lookup as it doesn't try the command if it doesn't match.

 

But would never run on anything non-windows unlike yours