Trouble with Rename command 1

[HRingman]

Can someone please explain to me how to use the rename command to replace part of a file name?

We have a lot of pdf files named something like "12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – APPROVED". When there is a new revision, we have to changed the pdf name from approved to superseded, so it should say "12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – SUPERSEDED". When there are a lot of files that need to be changed from approved to superseded at once, I thought the rename command could help me do it quickly, but it's not working for me.

I went to the command window, and directed it to the folder I had my files in. When I put “ren *APPROVED.pdf *SUPERSEDED.pdf” then the name changed from “12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – APPROVED” to “12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – APPROVED.pdfSUPERSEDED”. Same thing happened when I put “ren *APPROVED*.pdf *SUPERSEDED*.pdf”.

Since that wasn't working, I thought I would test the command and try to change the part of the file name 232 to ABC, so I put “ren *232*.pdf *ABC*.pdf”, and the names go from “12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – APPROVED” to “12 34 232 0100 0000 XX – ABCroved”, so now I really don't know what's going on.

If someone could explain what I'm doing wrong and how to do it right I'd appreciate it.

 

[BadBigBen]

you'd need a batch file, which reads the filename, then dropping the APPROVED part, then adding the SUPERSEDED portion, and then renaming it from old to new...

or search for a GUI based renaming app that does that and more...

e.g.

1-4a rename

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/rename-features.htm

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[mlgmartin]

Go to Start|Control Panel|Folder Options|View Tab|Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types

 

[xwb]

Are your filenames all the same length? If so, you could use the set command

for /f %f in (*APPROVED.pdf) do (
set xx=%f:1,10%
ren "%f" "%xx% - SUPERSEDED.pdf"
)

where 10 is the number of characters before the - APPROVED. Have a play and see what you get. You could always use echo instead of ren to see what it is going to do first

 

[HRingman]

Thanks for the advice y'all, but I still can't get it to work.

BadBigBen- That sounds like that would work for me, but I don't know that much about batch files, so I don't know how I would drop APPROVED and then add SUPERSEDED.

mlgmartin- The same thing happens whether I have the file extensions hidden or not. And I think for the rename command it's needed to put the file extensions, because if I put "ren *APPROVED *SUPERSEDED" then the command window says "The system cannot find the file specified."

xwb- The filenames are the same length. For the set command, do I just type what you put into the command prompt? When I typed that stuff that you show, it says "The system cannot find the file *APPROVED.pdf"

 

[webrabbit]

You cannot use an asterisk as anything but a suffix for the name or extension. CMD.EXE (like COMMAND.COM) ignores anthing following the asterisk (except the period, of course).

xwb's approch is the only one that might work in a simple batch program. I have in the past written a COBOL program that reads a list of file names and generates a batch file to explicitly rename each file according to the coded specifications. I imagine such a program could also be written in VB or any other full language.

 

[jkl0]

Try this method.

ren ???????????????????????APPROVED.pdf ???????????????????????SUPERCEDED.pdf

just tested and this seems to work

The question mark is a wild card for any character and you also have to represent the spaces with a question mark. I counted 20 characters (including spaces) in your example.

 

[HRingman]

jkl0 thank you! That worked! This is very exciting.

And thanks again to everyone else for your help.

 

[looslib]

The problem was the spaces in the file names. While valid names, they confuse most DOS based commands.