[windows] How do I create batch file to rename large number of files in a folder?

I'd like to rename a large number of files within a folder on a WinXP system, preferably using a batch file.

The files are currently named like this:

Vacation2010 001.jpg
Vacation2010 002.jpg
Vacation2010 003.jpg

And I'd like to change them to:

December 001.jpg
December 002.jpg
December 003.jpg

How can I perform this operation??

dir /b *.jpg >file.bat

This will give you lines such as:

Vacation2010 001.jpg
Vacation2010 002.jpg
Vacation2010 003.jpg

Edit file.bat in your favorite Windows text-editor, doing the equivalent of:

s/Vacation2010(.+)/rename "&" "December \1"/

That's a regex; many editors support them, but none that come default with Windows (as far as I know). You can also get a command line tool such as sed or perl which can take the exact syntax I have above, after escaping for the command line.

The resulting lines will look like:

rename "Vacation2010 001.jpg" "December 001.jpg"
rename "Vacation2010 002.jpg" "December 002.jpg"
rename "Vacation2010 003.jpg" "December 003.jpg"

You may recognize these lines as rename commands, one per file from the original listing. ;) Run that batch file in cmd.exe.

@ECHO off & SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion

SET "_dir=" REM Must finish with '\'
SET "_ext=jpg"
SET "_toEdit=Vacation2010"
SET "_with=December"
FOR %%f IN ("%_dir%*.%_ext%") DO (
    CALL :modifyString "%_toEdit%" "%_with%" "%%~Nf" fileName 
    RENAME "%%f" "!fileName!%%~Xf"
)
GOTO end

:modifyString what with in toReturn
    SET "__in=%~3"
    SET "__in=!__in:%~1=%~2!"
    IF NOT "%~4" == "" (
        SET %~4=%__in%
    ) ELSE (
        ECHO %__in%
    )
    EXIT /B

:end

This script allows you to change the name of all the files that contain Vacation2010 with the same name, but with December instead of Vacation2010.

If you copy and paste the code, you have to save the .bat in the same folder of the photos. If you want to save the script in another directory [E.G. you have a favorite folder for the utilities] you have to change the value of _dir with the path of the photos.

If you have to do the same work for other photos [or others files changig _ext] you have to change the value of _toEdit with the string you want to change [or erase] and the value of _with with the string you want to put instead of _toEdit [SET "_with=" if you simply want to erase the string specified in _toEdit].

you can do this easily without manual editing or using fancy text editors. Here's a vbscript.

Set objFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strFolder="c:\test"
Set objFolder = objFS.GetFolder(strFolder)
For Each strFile In objFolder.Files
    If objFS.GetExtensionName(strFile) = "jpg" Then    
        strFileName = strFile.Name
        If InStr(strFileName,"Vacation2010") > 0 Then           
            strNewFileName = Replace(strFileName,"Vacation2010","December")
            strFile.Name = strNewFileName
        End If 
    End If  
Next 

save as myscript.vbs and

C:\test> cscript //nologo myscript.vbs 

@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
SET old=Vacation2010
SET new=December
for /f "tokens=*" %%f in ('dir /b *.jpg') do (
  SET newname=%%f
  SET newname=!newname:%old%=%new%!
  move "%%f" "!newname!"
)

What this does is it loops over all .jpg files in the folder where the batch file is located and replaces the Vacation2010 with December inside the filenames.

You don't need a batch file, just do this from powershell :

powershell -C "gci | % {rni $_.Name ($_.Name -replace 'Vacation2010', 'December')}"