Windows Utility For Mass File Renaming Job

[rcecale]

I've been assigned a task of standardizing the file names for several thousand music files for an organization I'm associated with. The files have been stored in two separate locations, and we're working on combining them in one place, giving access to each location over a network.

A few thousand of the files have been named in a format describing the artist, track number and then song title, like this: Artist - 01 - Name Of Song.MP3. A lot more of the files (over 30,000 of them) have been named describing track number, artist, and then song title, like so: 01 - Artist - Name Of Song.MP3.

Does anyone know of a program that can handle the renaming function like this of a large amount of files? I've heard IrfanView has a pretty robust file re-naming feature, but can it handle something like this?

Basically, renaming several thousand files from Artist - 01 - Song Title.MP3 to 01 - Artist - Song Title.MP3

Thanks

Randy

[masraum]

I would think that if you can't find an app, that you could probably find someone to write you a quick script in pearl or something like that that could do the rearranging for you.

[rcecale]

Thanks, Steve! I considered some sort of Perl routine, but unfortunately my skills with Perl go as far as running an "ls" or "lst" command to see what files are there.

Randy

[GH85Carrera]

We found a program to do that a couple of years ago. Are you using a Mac or Windows computer?

[rcecale]

Using Windows, Glen.

Randy

[Scott R]

Windows can do this, 300k is not that big of a number. Just write a simple batch script like:

# START OF SCRIPT

# Declare input arguments.
var str dir pattern

# Collect a list of files matching the pattern.
var str list
find -f $pattern $dir >$list

# The list of files is in $list. Process one at a time.
while ($list <> "")
do
# Get the next file.
var str file, path, old_name, new_name
lex "1" $list > $file

# Remove path. This will give us just the file name in $old_name.
stex -p "^/^l[" $file > $old_name # After (but excluding) the last /

# Drop the first 7 characters.
chex -p "7]" $old_name > $new_name

# Insert MSG_IN_ after 14 characters.
chin "14" "MSG_IN_" $new_name > null # We are using > null because we dont want to see the output
# We want to insert MSG_IN_ into $new_name (thus no -p option).
script SS_SlashBack.txt ospath($file) >$file

# Rename $file to $new_name
system rename $file $new_name

# END OF SCRIPT


I stole this from another site because I didn't fell like typing it out, but this is a basic way to do it. You could of course then schedule it as a job inside of windows and have it run whenever.