Rename files in Powershell deleting everything after "_" - file

I am renaming several hundred files, all which vary with an item ID and then a bunch of text after. For example...
BBAT300_abcdefg.xls
BBAT400_abcdefg.xls
I need to delete everything from the underscore, and including the underscore on, so the result is this:
BBAT300.xls
BBAT400.xls
I found this bit of code earlier...
Get-ChildItem -Name -Filter *.xls | foreach {[Regex]::Match($_,"^[^_]*").Value}
and it appears to work, but I can't get it to actually rename the files. My knowledge of scripting is little to none, so this may be an easy fix, I just can't seem to find it. Powershell will show the results in powershell, but not actually rename the files.

You can just pipe this line to the rename item command:
Get-ChildItem -Filter *.txt | Foreach-Object -Process {
$NewName = [Regex]::Match($_.Name,"^[^_]*").Value + '.txt'
$_ | Rename-Item -NewName $NewName
}
EDIT: Changed it to support any location

Related

How to move only specific files in cmd to another folder?

I have a folder with files of different naming patterns. For example:
S012344
S00abcd
DA01234
DAL1230
D13459A
MOV0001
M123004
Now I need to move all the files except the one which have the following naming patterns: (** means regular expression)
- S00****
- Starts with D and ends with A
- MOV****
I need to do this as part of a batch file, I searched a lot but didn't find any apt solutions to address this problem.
There are ambiguities in your question. But, here is a possible way to do it. If you are on a supported Windows system, then it will have PowerShell. When you are satisfied that the files will be moved correctly, remove the -WhatIf from the Move-Item command.
=== Move-FilesIWant.ps1
Get-ChildItem -File -Path 'C:\src\t\' |
Where-Object { $_.BaseName -notmatch '(^S00....$|^D.*A$|^MOV....$)' } |
ForEach-Object { Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination 'C:\new\dir' -WhatIf }
If you must run it from a cmd.exe shell or .bat file script, use:
powershell -NoLogo -NoProfile -File '.\Move-FilesIWant.ps1'

PowerShell How to convert Get-ChildItem output to a string array

Alright, been working on this for hours and researching like crazy, but still not getting something to work. I need a string[] object created from get-childitem to pass to the Copy-Item -exclude parameter.
The hurdle is that I need to do recursion and need to have relative paths, so this is what I came up with:
$((Get-ChildItem -Path $Dest -Recurse -File).FullName.TrimStart($Dest))
This results in a clean list of existing files in $dest that are presented with a relative path to $dest. The problem is, if I add this to the copy-item -exclude parameter it seems to ignore it. Further research online suggests that copy-item will ignore the -exclude parameter if it is not of type string[].
If I check the type returned by the above command, I get System.Object[]. I expect it to be System.String[] or just plain String[].
How do I convert the output of the above command to a string array?
The full command using copy-item, for clarity, is:
Copy-Item -Path (Join-Path $src "*") -Destination $dest -Recurse -Force -Exclude $((Get-ChildItem -Path $Dest -Recurse -File).FullName.TrimStart($Dest))
My end goal is to copy files recursively without overwriting existing files.
To get a string[] from the names of get-childitem cmdlet use the following
[string[]]$files = (Get-ChildItem).Name
This will do what it appears you say that you want? But, I think that may not be everything to your question.
$((Get-ChildItem -Path $Dest -Recurse -File).FullName.Replace("$Dest",'.'))
#mklement0 is right, -Exclude and -Include support file name patterns (i.e. "*.txt") and not an array of explicit paths.
This sounds like an awful lot like an XY Problem ;-)
If you simply want to copy files recursively without overwriting them, use Robocopy with the Mirror switch. e.g.:
robocopy C:/Source C:/Dest /mir
EDIT:
By default Copy-Item will always overwrite the files on copy, and there is no switches to get around this. I usually recommend Robocopy as it really simplifies things like this and is very "robust" and reliable.
If your requirements are for a "pure" PowerShell version, then you have to break the scrip out into two parts, 1. Get a list of all the files 2. Iterate through the filer and test to see if they are already in the destination before copying.
$SrcPath = "C:/Source"
$DestPath = "C:/Dest"
$SrcFiles = Get-ChildItem $SrcPath -Recurse
#Iterate through files testing:
$SrcFiles | ForEach-Object {
#Calculate Destination File/Folder name/path
$DestObj = $_.FullName.Replace($SrcPath, $DestPath)
if(Test-Path -LiteralPath $DestObj)
{
#File already Exists
Write-Host "File already Exists: $DestObj"
}
else
{
#File Does not exist - Copy
Write-Host "File Does not Exist Copy: $DestObj"
Copy-Item -Path $_ -Destination $DestObj
}
}

Search Directory for folders

I am trying to create a batch file that I can use to type in a name of a folder and search multiple directories, then display the results in a new window. Example: I want to search for "tcash" in 3 separate directories, ie; \vm-xa01\users, vm-xa02\users and vm-xa03\users. How can I do this?
The original question had Powershell tag, so the answer is Powershell. For cmd (batch) script, I'd strongly suggest you to move into Powershell anyway. It's 2018 and cmd scripts require lots of tweaking.
In Powershell, there's a built-in cmdlet Out-GridView that might be suitable. For example, to display all txt files in c:\some\path and its subdirectories requires just a few commands. Like so,
gci c:\some\path -Recurse | ? { $_.extension -eq ".txt" } | ogv
First off, get a recursive list of all files
gci c:\some\path -Recurse
Then select those that have extension .txt
| ? { $_.extension -eq ".txt" }
Finally, pass the results to out-gridview aka ogv
| ogv
I also think PowerShell is the better script language for your task.
You can do a dir/Get-ChildItem with ranges [1-3] similar to a Regular Expression, so:
Get-ChildItem "\vm-xa0[1-3]\users\tcash" -File -Recurse | Out-Gridview
should enumerate all matching files and display in a gui window.

Powershell ISE - How do I copy many files and rename them at the same time?

I'm trying to use Powershell ISE to help me do the following:
Perform a search for many files (with an extension of *props.tmpl) under a certain folder and to include all sub-directories.
When found, I want to copy that file to its current location, but with an extension of *.tmpl2 (what I really want is to skip this step and copy *props.tmpl to a file called *props)
Then rename all *.tmpl2 files and remove the tmpl2 entirely, leaving just the *.props extension.
Ideally, what I want is to copy existing files to the same directory with a new name. It seems like all of the searches I've ran on Powershell ISE are not coming up with the right info I need (or I'm not searching for the right way to do it - trying 'powershell ise copy many files with new names' didn't help.
I had the replacement piece down and working, but I no longer want to eliminate the original tmpl files (they are templates so I may want to review them later for their original content).
What I was doing to replace them was this:
Get-ChildItem -Filter "*props.tmpl" -Recurse |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace '.tmpl',''}
Which works great other than completely removing the original file.
I started trying to piece something together, but I'm not understanding how to properly name the copy and stopped at this point with just an error (this was an attempt to skip the extra copy and just simply rename the copy instead of adding the extra step of '*.tmpl2'):
# Get all *props.tmpl files
Get-ChildItem -Filter "*props.tmpl" -Recurse |
# Iterate through each found file
ForEach-Object {
Copy-Item $_.name |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace '.props.tmpl','.props' }
}
Any help would be really appreciated (not much of a Powershell guy, but I'm trying to learn since powershell tends to be a little more dynamic then oldschool batch scripts).
Thanks in advance
Final version of this script per help from #ssennett
Here's my final version:
# Get all *props.tmpl files
Get-ChildItem -Filter "*props.tmpl" -Recurse |
# Iterate through each found file and copy it to non-template form in same location
ForEach-Object {
Copy-Item $_.FullName ($_.Name -replace '.tmpl','')
}
You're not too far from the answer! It's just how Copy-Item is being handled.
Without a Destination being specified, the Copy-Item will effectively try and copy the file onto itself. Instead of piping it to Rename-Item, you can handle the renaming with the -Destination parameter, as below.
$files = Get-ChildItem -Filter "*props.tmpl" -Recurse
$files | % { Copy-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination ($_.Name -replace 'props.tmpl','.props') }
This would copy a file called RandomFileprops.tmpl into another file RandomFile.props. If you want to remove the original, you can use the Move-Item cmdlet with the same parameters, which effectively renames the original file.

Rename files using results of Get-ChildItem in powershell

I have looked for questions relating to my issue, but can't find the correct syntax to use for what I want to achieve.
I want to take all the filenames from a folder using Get-ChildItem, and store these in a variable, then rename all the files in another folder using these names.
From what I have seen, I need something similar to:
CD directory a
$newnames = Get-ChildItem
CD directory b
Get-ChildItem | Foreach {$name = $newnames} | Rename-Item -Newname {$name}
I think perhaps the issue I am facing, is calling the name correctly from the $newnames variable.
Can anyone advise the correct syntax for what I need to do?
Here's one way assuming you have the same count of files in those folders. Remove the -WhatIf switch to actually rename the files:
[array]$a = Get-ChildItem .\DirA
[array]$b = Get-ChildItem .\DirB
for($i=0; $i -lt $a.Length; $i++)
{
$b[$i] | Rename-Item -NewName $a[$i] -WhatIf
}

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