Code - remove part of file name

It worked!

Wicked! 

Your a genius!

Yup.

And it's called football not soccer I'm from England ^_^

So am I. It's just that there are so many Seppos on here, I thought I had to use a word they'd understand.

Glad I could give you a hand, shandy 

  What a guy! hehe

So is the /1 syntax to ignore letter case?? :S

It's not a figure 1, it's a small L, although a capital L works just as well. It forces the output of DIR to be in all lower case, whatever the case of the letters in the filenames.

I see, so was it there to convert everything to lowercase so when its looking for that string the case of the letters won't be an issue?
I take it that it didn't work before because it was looking for [www.lokotorrents.com] in lower case and couldn't find that exact string? would it have worked if we changed set deletestring=[www.lokotorrents.com] to set deletestring=[WwW.LoKoTorrents.CoM] ?

I see, so was it there to convert everything to lowercase so when its looking for that string the case of the letters won't be an issue?

Yes, that's right.

I take it that it didn't work before because it was looking for [www.lokotorrents.com] in lower case and couldn't find that exact string?

Yes, that's right too. The new filename was produced from the old one by using the string replace feature of the SET command

set newstring=%oldstring:A=B% where A is the string you are looking for and B is the string you want to replace it with. If B is absent it replaces A with nothing, i.e. removes it. It is case sensitive. For example

set string=Mary had a little lamb
set string=%string:Mary=John%
string becomes John had a little lamb
set string=%string:little =%          (include the space after little!)
string becomes John had a lamb

would it have worked if we changed set deletestring=[www.lokotorrents.com] to set deletestring=[WwW.LoKoTorrents.CoM] ?

Yes, that's the other way we could have solved the problem.

I see how it works now, thanks a lot, this code will be useful!

Code: [Select]


@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=[www.lokotorrents.com]
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
set oldfilename=%%F
set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
echo Ren "!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
)
echo.
echo All done
pause


Copy the above into your editor e.g. Notepad. Save as a .bat or .cmd file in the folder where the files are. Run it. See the results. If you are happy with the way it offers to rename the files, remove 'echo' from the beginning of the line starting 'echo Ren' & save and run it for real.

Maybe backup the files first in case it all goes wrong?

Or change Ren to Copy?

Your choice.

I expect you can see where to edit so it will remove other strings...

You're the MAN!

AWESOME CODE. Just what i needed...

Thanx! Gracias!

I miss Dias de verano...

Hello. I can only hope you still get this considering the age of this discussion. This script works wonderfully except it is only written to handle one folder/directory of files. Is there a way to run recursively on all subfolders of a primary folder? I'd really appreciate any help you can provide! I have to remove two characters,  "-2" from approximately 35,000 files.

try this

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=-2
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b /s /a-d ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
        set oldfilename=%%~nxF
        set pathname=%%~dpF
        set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
        echo Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
        )
echo.
echo All done
pause
(

The code provided was very much appreciated. Unfortunately I am feeling slightly murderous at the moment. This worked very well but I encountered a large number (in the hundreds) of folders with duplicate files in them. I need this batch file to check the folders for a existing file first before renaming the "####_2.xxx" file to remove the _2. This will ensure removal of the old file first. Any more help you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

My best attempts at the code:

#1)

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=_2
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.


goto findbadfile

:findbadfile
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b /s /a-d /l *.mp3 ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
   set oldfilename=%%~nxF
   set pathname=%%~dpF
   set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
   if exist "!pathname!!newfilename!" (goto deletefirst) else (goto renamer)

   echo.
echo All done
pause
)

:deletefirst
   echo Found existing duplicate file !pathname!!newfilename! that should be removed first...   
   echo Deleting !pathname!!newfilename!
   del -f "!pathname!!newfilename!"
   goto renamer



:renamer
echo.
   echo Renaming....
   echo !pathname!!oldfilename!   to
   echo !pathname!!newfilename!....
   Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
rem   echo Press a key to continue or Ctrl-C to stop
   
   goto findbadfile
   
#2)

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=_2
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.


goto findbadfile

:findbadfile
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b /s /a-d /l *.mp3 ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
   set oldfilename=%%~nxF
   set pathname=%%~dpF
   set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
   if exist "!pathname!!newfilename!" (goto deletefirst) else (goto renamer)
rem   Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
   echo.)
echo All done
pause


:deletefirst
   echo Found existing duplicate file !pathname!!newfilename! that should be removed first...   
   echo Deleting !pathname!!newfilename!
rem   del -f "!pathname!!newfilename!"
rem   Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
rem   goto renamer



:renamer
echo.
   echo Renaming....
   echo !pathname!!oldfilename!   to
   echo !pathname!!newfilename!....
rem   Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
   echo Press a key to continue or Ctrl-C to stop
   
rem   goto findbadfile
   

I have made multiple attempts but to no avail...it either does nothing or ends up deleting files that it shouldn't. I guess I don't understand how the FOR-DO loops work when combined with an IF-THEN-ELSE very well.

Thanks in advance!

Do you mean that the pre-existing duplicate filename is found in the same folder as the file with -2 in its name which you want to rename, and that you wish to delete this pre-existing file first?

If that is the case, try this


@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=-2
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b /s /a-d ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
        set oldfilename=%%~nxF
        set pathname=%%~dpF
        set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
        if exist "!pathname!!newfilename!" (
            echo Filename conflict
            echo Folder     : !pathname!
            echo Filename : !newfilename!
            echo Deleting file
            Del "!pathname!!newfilename!"
            )
        Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
        )
echo.
echo All done
pause

Or this

Code: [Select]

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set deletestring=-2
echo Ready to start
echo.
pause
echo.
for /f "delims==" %%F in ('dir /b /s /a-d ^| find "%deletestring%"') do (
        set oldfilename=%%~nxF
        set pathname=%%~dpF
        set newfilename=!oldfilename:%deletestring%=!
        if exist "!pathname!!newfilename!" (
            echo Filename conflict
            echo Folder            : !pathname!
            echo Present  filename : !oldfilename!
            echo Proposed filename : !newfilename!
            echo This file exists.
            echo Deleting file
            Del "!pathname!!newfilename!"
            )
        Ren "!pathname!!oldfilename!" "!newfilename!"
        )
echo.
echo All done
pause