Hi, recently (jan 1st 2004) I did a google search for "batch rename". I was trying to remember how to rename a bunch of files using the syntax microsoft provided for its .bat files. I was foiled! This is a simple task in unix or OS X, and it isn't that hard under windows. "Batch rename" is the name of about 15 or so various programs. A number of which can only work on a maximum of 8 files and all of them want your money. Well I hope that any future surfers will find this page and proceed to batch rename files in a do-it-yourself manner I will describe. For Free.
Open your command prompt and type "help for". If nothing happens you'd better read the document provided below, which is the same document. Now the quick ones among you can get started, thanking me for pointing them at the pertinent information. While you're here, let's go through an example or two.
Change directory to where you've kept your files. If you're having trouble with this, type "cd " and drag the folder where the files are onto the command window and press enter.
Okay here's a simple example:
for %F in (*.jpg) do ren %F %~nFsmall%~xF
This does the command "ren %F %~nFsmall%~xF" for all files named
something.jpg. Where %F becomes the file's name, %~nF becomes the
file's name without ".jpg" and %~xF becomes the inverse of the former
(i.e. ".jpg"). Thus all files are named somethingsmall.jpg.
With some creativity you could do all sorts of renaming using prefixes suffixes and file extension changes this way, but automatic numbering requires something a little different... look into it yourself for now... I'll let you know what to do for it when I have a need to do it.
help for:
Runs a specified command for each file in a set of files.
FOR %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]
%variable Specifies a replaceable parameter.
(set) Specifies a set of one or more files. Wildcards may be used.
command Specifies the command to carry out for each file.
command-parameters
Specifies parameters or switches for the specified command.
To use the FOR command in a batch program, specify %%variable instead
of %variable. Variable names are case sensitive, so %i is different
from %I.
If Command Extensions are enabled, the following additional
forms of the FOR command are supported:
FOR /D %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]
If set contains wildcards, then specifies to match against directory
names instead of file names.
FOR /R [[drive:]path] %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]
Walks the directory tree rooted at [drive:]path, executing the FOR
statement in each directory of the tree. If no directory
specification is specified after /R then the current directory is
assumed. If set is just a single period (.) character then it
will just enumerate the directory tree.
FOR /L %variable IN (start,step,end) DO command [command-parameters]
The set is a sequence of numbers from start to end, by step amount.
So (1,1,5) would generate the sequence 1 2 3 4 5 and (5,-1,1) would
generate the sequence (5 4 3 2 1)
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ("string") DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('command') DO command [command-parameters]
or, if usebackq option present:
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('string') DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (`command`) DO command [command-parameters]
filenameset is one or more file names. Each file is opened, read
and processed before going on to the next file in filenameset.
Processing consists of reading in the file, breaking it up into
individual lines of text and then parsing each line into zero or
more tokens. The body of the for loop is then called with the
variable value(s) set to the found token string(s). By default, /F
passes the first blank separated token from each line of each file.
Blank lines are skipped. You can override the default parsing
behavior by specifying the optional "options" parameter. This
is a quoted string which contains one or more keywords to specify
different parsing options. The keywords are:
eol=c - specifies an end of line comment character
(just one)
skip=n - specifies the number of lines to skip at the
beginning of the file.
delims=xxx - specifies a delimiter set. This replaces the
default delimiter set of space and tab.
tokens=x,y,m-n - specifies which tokens from each line are to
be passed to the for body for each iteration.
This will cause additional variable names to
be allocated. The m-n form is a range,
specifying the mth through the nth tokens. If
the last character in the tokens= string is an
asterisk, then an additional variable is
allocated and receives the remaining text on
the line after the last token parsed.
usebackq - specifies that the new semantics are in force,
where a back quoted string is executed as a
command and a single quoted string is a
literal string command and allows the use of
double quotes to quote file names in
filenameset.
Some examples might help:
FOR /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, " %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k
would parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with
a semicolon, passing the 2nd and 3rd token from each line to the for
body, with tokens delimited by commas and/or spaces. Notice the for
body statements reference %i to get the 2nd token, %j to get the
3rd token, and %k to get all remaining tokens after the 3rd. For
file names that contain spaces, you need to quote the filenames with
double quotes. In order to use double quotes in this manner, you also
need to use the usebackq option, otherwise the double quotes will be
the last character in the tokens= string is an
asterisk, then an additional variable is
allocated and receives the remaining text on
the line after the last token parsed.
usebackq - specifies that the new semantics are in force,
where a back quoted string is executed as a
command and a single quoted string is a
literal string command and allows the use of
double quotes to quote file names in
filenameset.
Some examples might help:
FOR /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, " %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k
would parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with
a semicolon, passing the 2nd and 3rd token from each line to the for
body, with tokens delimited by commas and/or spaces. Notice the for
body statements reference %i to get the 2nd token, %j to get the
3rd token, and %k to get all remaining tokens after the 3rd. For
file names that contain spaces, you need to quote the filenames with
double quotes. In order to use double quotes in this manner, you also
need to use the usebackq option, otherwise the double quotes will be
would enumerate the environment variable names in the current
environment.
In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced.
You can now use the following optional syntax:
%~I - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (")
%~fI - expands %I to a fully qualified path name
%~dI - expands %I to a drive letter only
%~pI - expands %I to a path only
%~nI - expands %I to a file name only
%~xI - expands %I to a file extension only
%~sI - expanded path contains short names only
%~aI - expands %I to file attributes of file
%~tI - expands %I to date/time of file
%~zI - expands %I to size of file
%~$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH
environment variable and expands %I to the
fully qualified name of the first one found.
If the environment variable name is not
defined or the file is not found by the
search, then this modifier expands to the
empty string
The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:
%~dpI - expands %I to a drive letter and path only
%~nxI - expands %I to a file name and extension only
%~fsI - expands %I to a full path name with short names only
%~dp$PATH:i - searches the directories listed in the PATH
environment variable for %I and expands to the
drive letter and path of the first one found.
%~ftzaI - expands %I to a DIR like output line
In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid
values. The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.
Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and
avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.
