Powershell

939 readers

6 users here now

PowerShell (POSH) is a a task automation command-line shell and scripting language created by Microsoft. It became part of the FOSS community in 2016 and is now available across Windows, Linux, and macOS

Resources:

Install PowerShell – Instructions for Windows, Linux, and macOS
PowerShell Galley Your one-stop shop community and Microsoft modules.
PowerShell Repository – View the PowerShell source code, report issues, or contribute to the project yourself.
PowerShell Community Call – Hear from and talk directly to the product team on the 3rd Thursday of every month
PowerShell in Visual Studio Code – It’s time to say goodbye to ISE

Rules:

Be civil (aka don’t be a jerk). Remember there are people from all walks of life, all with different levels of expertise. You can disagree with someone, but please be civil when doing so.
Adhere to the Lemmy Code of Conduct
Follow all programming.dev rules
Posts must relate to PowerShell or the PowerShell ecosystem.
Use code blocks to make things easier to read.
Memes and humorous posts are allowed but try not over do it. And keep them relevant to PowerShell
No discussion about piracy or hacking.
If someone provides an answer that solves your problem, please reply, so others know what the solution was. ^And^ ^so^ ^the^ ^person^ ^who^ ^suggested^ ^it^ ^gets^ ^that^ ^oh^ ^so^ ^sweet^ ^shot^ ^of^ ^dopamine.^
If you find a solution to your problem by other means, please take your time to write down the steps you used to solve your problem in the original post. You can potentially help others having the same problem!

Self-promotion rules:

Self-promotion content must be marked as [OC]
Do not SPAM. Content must be PowerShell related.
Only 10% of your contributions can be self-promotion. In other words, 90% of your contribution must not be self-promotion.
Personal blogs are not considered self-promotion, at this time, as long as they are free to access and relevant. Please do not abuse this.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

pwshguy@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

Renaming multiple files based on a list of names (lemy.lol)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by BobTheDestroyer@lemy.lol to c/powershell@programming.dev

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Note: I'm a beginner to Powershell and a bit more familiar with Bash (though still a beginner for that too).

*I have multiple PDF files and I want to rename each file based on a list of names found in an Excel/CSV (could be a text file if easier) file.

*The list begins at the A2 cell and the A1 cell has the header 'name'.

*The files are in sequential order and match the order of the list of names.

Thanks for your help!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Gurfaild@feddit.de 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (18 children)

If the CSV file contains both the current names and the new names, this should work if you use the first line for column labels (I'm using OldName and NewName in this example):

Import-CSV $pathToCSV | ForEach-Object { Rename-Item $_.OldName $_.NewName }

If you just have a list of new names as a text file where the first line of the file is the new name for the first file (by name, sorted alphabetically), this should work:

$files = Get-ChildItem -File *.pdf | Sort-Object -Property Name #I think the output of Get-ChildItem is already sorted by name, but I'm not sure
$newNames = Get-Content $pathToTXT
if ($files.Count -ne $newNames.Count) {
    Write-Error "The number of PDF files to be renamed does not match the number of new names"
    exit
}
0..($files.Count - 1) | ForEach-Object { Rename-Item $files[$_] $newNames[$_] }

[–] BobTheDestroyer@lemy.lol 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks but PS closes so I assume it ran into an error. I'm not sure why because there is the same number of files and list items. I doublechecked to make sure.

[–] Gurfaild@feddit.de 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I have no idea why this wouldn't work on your machine - I've tested it on mine and it works fine. So maybe you have overlooked some small things:

If there are any other PDFs in the directory that you don't want to rename, then the list of files is longer than the list of names.
If the PS window closes completely, you might have typed it into the terminal instead of running it as a script - then the problem might just be that you closed the if block too early, so PS immediately executes the exit command.
If your list of new names contains a column label like in a one-column CSV, then it has one more line than there are files.

load more comments (16 replies)