Replace or delete certain characters from filenames of all files in a folder

Question

How do I delete certain characters or replace certain characters with other characters by some batch file execution  for filenames of all files in a Windows folder in one go  is there a DOS command for that

User · Accepted Answer

Use PowerShell to do anything smarter for a DOS prompt. Here, I've shown how to batch rename all the files and directories in the current directory that contain spaces by replacing them with _ underscores.

Dir |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace " ","_" }

EDIT :
Optionally, the Where-Object command can be used to filter out ineligible objects for the successive cmdlet (command-let). The following are some examples to illustrate the flexibility it can afford you:

To skip any document files

Dir |
Where-Object { $_.Name -notmatch "\.(doc|xls|ppt)x?$" } |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace " ","_" }

To process only directories (pre-3.0 version)
```
Dir |
Where-Object { $_.Mode -match "^d" } |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace " ","_" }
```
PowerShell v3.0 introduced new Dir flags. You can also use Dir -Directory there.

To skip any files already containing an underscore (or some other character)

Dir |
Where-Object { -not $_.Name.Contains("_") } |
Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace " ","_" }

User · Answer

A one-liner command in Windows PowerShell to delete or rename certain characters will be as below   here the whitespace is being replaced with underscore   Dir   Rename-Item    NewName      name    replace

User · Answer

I would recommend the rename  command for this  Type ren     at the command line for more help

User · Answer

This batch file can help  but it has some limitations  The filename characters    and   cannot be replaced  going from memory here  and an   in the filenames might be a problem too   In this portion  newname      on every line in the lower block it replaces the character after   with the character after   so as it stands the bunch of characters are going to be replaced with an underscore   Remove the echo to activate the ren command as it will merely print the commands to the console window until you do   It will only process the current folder  unless you add  s to the DIR command portion and then it will process all folders under the current one too   To delete a certain character  remove the character from after the   sign  In  newname z   an entry like this would remove all z characters  case insensitive     echo off for  f  delims     a in   dir  a -d  o n  b   do call  next    a  pause GOTO EOF  next set  newname   nx1   set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname  amp      set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname -     set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname       set  newname  newname        echo ren  1   newname

User · Answer

The PowerShell answers are good  but the Rename-Item command doesn t work in the same target directory unless ALL of your files have the unwanted character in them  fails if it finds duplicates    If you re like me and had a mix of good names and bad names  try this script instead  will replace spaces with an underscore    Get-ChildItem -recurse -name   ForEach-Object   Move-Item       replace

[windows] Replace or delete certain characters from filenames of all files in a folder

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