Rename All Files in a Folder With a Prefix in a Single Command

Rename multiple files in a folder, add a prefix (Windows)

Option 1: Using Windows PowerShell

Open the windows menu.
Type: "PowerShell" and open the 'Windows PowerShell' command window.

Goto folder with desired files: e.g. cd "C:\house chores"
Notice: address must incorporate quotes "" if there are spaces involved.

You can use 'dir' to see all the files in the folder. Using '|' will pipeline the output of 'dir' for the command that follows.

Notes: 'dir' is an alias of 'Get-ChildItem'. See: wiki: cmdlets.
One can provide further functionality. e.g. 'dir -recurse' outputs all the files, folders and sub-folders.

What if I only want a range of files?

Instead of 'dir |' I can use:

dir | where-object -filterscript {($_.Name -ge 'DSC_20') -and ($_.Name -le 'DSC_31')} |

For batch-renaming with the directory name as a prefix:

dir | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + " - " + $_.Name}

Option 2: Using Command Prompt

In the folder press shift+right-click : select 'open command-window here'

for %a in (*.*) do ren "%a" "prefix - %a"

If there are a lot of files, it might be good to add an '@echo off' command before this and an 'echo on' command at the end.

Rename multiple files in a folder, add a line counts as prefix (Powershell)

What you are doing is almost fine, the error comes from trying to concatenate an int with a string, PowerShell attempts type conversion of all elements to the type of the leftmost object in the operation:

The operation that PowerShell performs is determined by the Microsoft .NET type of the leftmost object in the operation. PowerShell tries to convert all the objects in the operation to the .NET type of the first object. If it succeeds in converting the objects, it performs the operation appropriate to the .NET type of the first object. If it fails to convert any of the objects, the operation fails.

Since the leftmost object in this case (the .Length property) is of the type int PowerShell attempts to convert the rest to int and it fails, for example:

PS /> 1 + 'A'
InvalidArgument: Cannot convert value "A" to type "System.Int32". Error: "Input string was not in a correct format."

This would be easily fixed by type casting the returned value to sring:

-NewName { [string](Get-Content $_).Length + "_" + $_.BaseName + $_.Extension }

Or for example using string formatting or the -f format operator:

-NewName { '{0}_{1}{2}' -f (Get-Content $_).Length, $_.BaseName, $_.Extension }

As for "the bonus", with string formatting see How do I control the number of integral digits?

In this case you can use {0:0000}, as an example:

(0..1000).ForEach({'{0:0000}' -f $_})

On the other hand, if you have many lengthy files, [System.IO.File]::ReadAllLines(...) is likely to be faster than Get-Content:

-NewName { '{0:0000}_{1}' -f [System.IO.File]::ReadAllLines($_).Length, $_.Name }
# OR
$io = [System.IO.File]
-NewName { '{0:0000}_{1}' -f $io::ReadAllLines($_).Length, $_.Name }

Batch rename multiple files in powershell with a prefix

try this:

Get-ChildItem | rename-item -NewName { $_.BaseName + "_Aug_2020" + $_.Extension}

How to rename all files within a folder not starting with a specific prefix string?

This could be done for example with following batch code:

@echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions EnableDelayedExpansion
for %%I in ("C:\Temp\*.text") do (
    set "FileName=%%~nI"
    if /I not "!FileName:~0,4!" == "RAW_" ren "%%~I" "RAW_%%~nxI"
)
endlocal

If a string is assigned to an environment variable within a code block starting with ( and ending with a matching ) and referencing the string or parts of the string of this environment variable within same code block is necessary as for this rename operation, delayed expansion must be used as shown above. The help of command set explains this on a simple IF and a simple FOR example very clear.

For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.

• echo /?
• endlocal /?
• for /?
• if /?
• ren /?
• set /?
• setlocal /?

Append a prefix to all files recursively with rename

By default, rename modifies the entire path. The filename can be considered alone by passing the -d flag. Also note that the * glob will match all files in the current directory, not just the ones you pass to stdin. So to prepend 00_ to the filenames, use:

find . -name "*.pdf" | rename -d 's/^/00_/'

You can also add the -n flag to do a dry-run where the renames are printed and not executed.

Rename or remove prefix for multiple files to each ones' number in Windows

I don't understand why you can't use a batch file. But here is a solution that should work with most file names.

Critical - first you must make sure you have an undefined variable name, I'll use fname

set "fname="

Next is the command to actually do the renaming. It won't work properly if fname is already defined.

for %a in (prefix*.txt) do @(set "fname=%a" & call ren "%fname%" "%fname:*prefix=%")

The fname variable is defined for each iteration and then the syntax %fname:*prefix=% replaces the first occurrence of "prefix" with nothing. The tricky thing is Windows first attempts to expand %fname% when the command is first parsed. Of course that won't work because it hasn't been defined yet. On the command line the percents are preserved if the variable is not found. The CALL causes an extra expansion phase that occurs after the variable has been set, so the expansion works.

If fname is defined prior to running the command, then it will simply try to rename that same file for each iteration instead of the value that is being assigned within the loop.

If you want to run the command again with a different prefix, you will have to first clear the definition again.

EDIT - Here is a batch file named "RemovePrefix.bat" that does the job

::RemovePrefix.bat  prefix  fileMask
@echo off
setlocal
for %%A in ("%~1%~2") do (
  set "fname=%%~A"
  call ren "%%fname%%" "%%fname:*%~1=%%"
)

Suppose you had files named like "prefixName.txt", then you would use the script by executing

RemovePrefix  "prefix"  "*.txt"

The batch file will rename files in your current directory. The batch file will also have to be in your current directory unless the batch file exists in a directory that is in your PATH variable. Or you can specify the full path to the batch file when you call it.

The rules for expansion are different in a batch file. FOR variables must be referenced as %%A instead of %A, and %%fname%% is not expanded initially, instead the double percents are converted into single percents and then %fname% is expanded after the CALL. It doesn't matter if fname is already defined with the batch file. The SETLOCAL makes the definition of fname temporary (local) to the batch file.

Renaming multiple files in a folder by adding Prefix using python

You can use glob to find all the html files:

from glob import glob
import os
pre = "xyz_"
[os.rename(f, "{}{}".format(pre, f)) for f in glob("*.html")]

html files starting with a . should be ignored as glob treats filenames beginning with a dot (.) as special cases..

def glob(pathname):
    """Return a list of paths matching a pathname pattern.

    The pattern may contain simple shell-style wildcards a la
    fnmatch. However, unlike fnmatch, filenames starting with a
    dot are special cases that are not matched by '*' and '?'
    patterns.

    """
    return list(iglob(pathname))

prefixing all files in multiple folders

Use the -Recurse switch to get items from subfolders too. Additionally you can also use the -File switch to return files only:

(dir -File -Recurse) | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Directory.Name + " - " + $_.Name}

Note: As @postanote pointed out, it's always recommendable to test destructive commands first using the -WhatIf switch.

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