Is it possible to change a filename prefix using the rename command with wildcards?

Question

I have read as much of How does the Windows RENAME command interpret wildcards as I can understand, and still cannot decide if there is some wildcard combination you can use to make RENAME do this:

Old file names: abc001.txt, abc002.txt, abc003.txt, ... etc
New file names: demo_001.txt, demo_002.txt, demo_003.txt, ... etc
or: x001.txt, x002.txt, x003.txt, ... etc
or: file01.txt, file02.txt, file03.txt, ... etc

What I do know is that rename abc*.txt xyz*.txt will change all abc prefixes to xyz, but only because abc and xyz are of identical length. Is there a simple rename command which will cope with either a shorter or longer prefix... or do you have to use a batch process to carry out such renames?

I know that it’s not exactly the answer to your specific question, but for these tasks I usually use [RenameIt!](http://sourceforge.net/projects/renameit/) utility. — stansult, Jan 08 '14 at 21:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 08 '14 at 21:50

1

In PowerShell for your first example you could use:

Dir C:\folder | ren –NewName {$_.name -replace "abc","demo_"}

Add -whatif as last parameter if you want to test the command before executing it

answered Jan 08 '14 at 21:50

nixda

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dbenham · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-09T04:10:23.330

The answer is No, you cannot change the length of a file name prefix like you want using just the RENAME command with wildcards. It will require some amount of more complex scripting, or else a non-standard 3rd party tool.

If you read the rules carefully, you will see that the wildcards in the source mask have no bearing in the rename result - they only filter which files are renamed. The non-wildcard prefix characters in the target mask substitute one for one with the characters in the original name.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 08 '14 at 22:08

Here's the way to do it with JP Software's TCC/LE, a command interpreter whose REN command supports regular expressions:

ren ::abc(\d+.txt) ::demo_\1

Without regular expressions, it's still a one-liner. One simply uses the @INSTR[] variable function and the FOR command:

for i in (abc*.txt) do ren %i demo_%@instr[3,,%i]

Is it possible to change a filename prefix using the rename command with wildcards?

3 Answers3

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