Rename/replace

[one stupid guy]

I can't figure it out...

I'd like to rename a number of files, replacing underscores with a space.
For example, I'd like to rename "the_first_file.txt"  to "the first file.txt"
 
I thought the following would work, but it didn't:

RENAME *_*>* *" "*.*


Can anyone help a brother out?

[Helpmeh]

This might work...

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b') do (
set fileorig=%%a
set filenew=!fileorig:_= !
ren !fileorig! "!filenew!"
)
Save it in the folder which contains the files you want to change.

[Salmon Trout]

Code: [Select]

setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "delims=" %%A in (*.txt) do (
    set oldname=%%A
    set newname=!oldname:_= !
    ren "!oldname!" "!newname!"
    )


[Salmon Trout]

Great minds think alike

[Helpmeh]

Why thank you ST, strangest thing, I was just about to say that too.

[BillRichardson]

C:\>type  under2.bat

Code: [Select]

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
dir /b the*.txt  >  _txtfiles.txt


for /f  "delims=" %%i in (_txtfiles.txt)  do (
echo  %%i

set var=%%i

For /F "delims=" %%a in ('echo %%i ^| sed 's/_/ /g') do set var3=%%a

echo var =!var!

echo var3 =!var3!



ren  "!var!" "!var3!"

rem ren   "!var3!" "!var!"

)

Output:

C:\> under2.bat
the_first_file.txt
the_fourth_file.txt
the_second_file.txt
the_third_file.txt
 the_first_file.txt
var =the_first_file.txt
var3 =the first file.txt
 the_second_file.txt
var =the_second_file.txt
var3 =the second file.txt
 the_third_file.txt
var =the_third_file.txt
var3 =the third file.txt
 the_fourth_file.txt
var =the_fourth_file.txt
var3 =the fourth file.txt
C:\>

[Salmon Trout]

Oh God! he's found about sed now! I shudder to think what's next...

OP: Dear Mr bill... I tried running your script and it said "'sed' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."

[BillRichardson]

"'sed' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."

http://www.computerhope.com/unix/used.htm

ghostdog74 is the expert with sed and awk (gawk)

I'm sure ghostdog74  will help you.

[Salmon Trout]

Suppose they don't want to use your weird sounding program?

[BillRichardson]

Suppose they don't want to use your weird sounding program?

http://www.computerhope.com/unix/used.htm

Sed has been used many times on the Hope Board.

Sed is a quick and easy stream editor

Speak with Ghostdog74.

[ghostdog74]

I can't figure it out...

I'd like to rename a number of files, replacing underscores with a space.
For example, I'd like to rename "the_first_file.txt"  to "the first file.txt"
 
I thought the following would work, but it didn't:

RENAME *_*>* *" "*.*


Can anyone help a brother out?

if you have many underscores, eg file_____test.txt, do you want to replace them with just 1 space as well?

[one stupid guy]

I better fess-up on my newbieness; I know less than you think.
For the first proposed solution above (thanks to Helpmeh and Salmon Trout), do I just type it into a DOS emulator, or is it more involved?
Keep in mind that I want this to go through a few hundred files and make this change to them all (swap an underscore for a space).

Ghostdog, there are no instances of multiple underscores, but I would want them replaced by a single space.

I tried to identify the elements of the above solution so as to educate myself.
Below is a line-by-line explanation. Is my understanding correct?


setlocal enabledelayedexpansion - the activity of the command will be kept to a specified folder

for /f "delims=" %%A in (*.txt) do - 'for' is like an "IF" command, but I don't know what /f does.
                                   - I don't get the "delims=" either.
                                   - Are the percentage signs are wildcards?
                                   - I know that *.txt means 'all text files'

    set oldname=%%A         - does this specify the format of the old name?

   set newname=!oldname:_= !  - this makes sense (I think), it changes the underscore to a space

    ren "!oldname!" "!newname!"  - this renames the file, with the new (underscoreless) name


Thank you for your insight and patience,

[Helpmeh]

I better fess-up on my newbieness; I know less than you think.
For the first proposed solution above (thanks to Helpmeh and Salmon Trout), do I just type it into a DOS emulator, or is it more involved?
Keep in mind that I want this to go through a few hundred files and make this change to them all (swap an underscore for a space).

Ghostdog, there are no instances of multiple underscores, but I would want them replaced by a single space.

I tried to identify the elements of the above solution so as to educate myself.
Below is a line-by-line explanation. Is my understanding correct?


setlocal enabledelayedexpansion - the activity of the command will be kept to a specified folder

for /f "delims=" %%A in (*.txt) do - 'for' is like an "IF" command, but I don't know what /f does.
                                   - I don't get the "delims=" either.
                                   - Are the percentage signs are wildcards?
                                   - I know that *.txt means 'all text files'

    set oldname=%%A         - does this specify the format of the old name?

   set newname=!oldname:_= !  - this makes sense (I think), it changes the underscore to a space

    ren "!oldname!" "!newname!"  - this renames the file, with the new (underscoreless) name


Thank you for your insight and patience,

Honestly, you understood very well for a beginner. I'll just confirm and fix what you said about the script:
Setlocal enabledelayedexpansion I'm not exactly sure what this means, but regular variables in for commands are wrapped in ! and not %.
"Delims=" That means that there are no delimiters (things that seperate the information) to be used.
%%a (or %%A) That is a FOR variable. It is only used in the FOR command. For every line of data, it will become that. So if a line was file_name.txt, then %%a would become file_name.txt .
in (*.txt) That is where the data comes from. For each file, there is a new line. * is a wildcard. If you knew how long the desired file is, you can use a certain amount of ? (question marks are a 1-character wildcard).
Set oldfilename=%%a Doing that allows me to work with the name.
Set newfilename=!oldfilename:_= ! That will make newfilename the same as oldfilename, but every _ becomes a space.
Ren !oldfilename! !newfilename! Pretty explanitory.

Understand a little better now?

[Salmon Trout]

That's about it, helpmeh, but if I can just jump in with the FOR line...

for /f "delims=" %%A in (*.txt) do

The FOR command works like this

FOR [switch] [option block] %%Variable in (dataset) do (something)

You can type FOR /? at the prompt to get several screens full of detailed help but I will briefly break down what that line does

/f ... switch that tells FOR that (dataset) is to be treated as a series of lines to be processed. In this case, dataset is *.txt which means "one by one, each file with the .txt extension in the current directory".

"delims=" ... option block that tells FOR that each line of output is to be taken whole and not split into "tokens"

%%Variable ... A loop variable is a single letter, a-a or A-Z and the contents of (dataset) are assigned one by one to this variable, in this case %%A will contain, one after the other, the name of each .txt file.

[ghostdog74]

Ghostdog, there are no instances of multiple underscores, but I would want them replaced by a single space.

You can use vbscript. this replaces multiple _ (and consecutive _ ) with single space.

Code: [Select]

Set objFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set regEx = New RegExp            ' Create regular expression.
regEx.Global=True
strFolder = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
strOld = WScript.Arguments.Item(1)
strNew = WScript.Arguments.Item(2)
regEx.Pattern = strOld&"+"
Set objFolder = objFS.GetFolder(strFolder)
For Each strFile In objFolder.Files
strFileName = strFile.Name
If objFS.GetExtensionName(strFileName) = "txt" And InStr(strFileName,strOld)>0 Then
strFileName = regEx.Replace(strFileName, strNew)
strFile.Name = strFileName
End If
Next


save as replace.vbs and on command line

Code: [Select]

c:\test> cscript //nologo replace.vbs c:\test _ " "