I am not a big fan of file names with spaces. I realize they are easy to read and obviously much more \"natural\", but they are simply a royal pain to deal with, especially when working from a command prompt or PowerShell. So naturally the solution is to rename these files and replace the space with something else like an underscore (_). Here's how I'll tackle this using Windows PowerShell.<\/p>\n
First, I need to isolate files that have a space in the name. For that I can use a regular expression pattern with the -Match operator.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"DOS\"]
\nPS C:\\> dir e:\\test | where {-Not $_.PsIscontainer -AND $_.name -match \"\\s\"}<\/p>\n
Directory: E:\\test<\/p>\n
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
\n---- ------------- ------ ----
\n-a--- 10\/12\/2011 8:56 AM 31708 my processes.txt
\n-a--- 10\/12\/2011 8:56 AM 26662 My services.txt
\n-a--- 2\/15\/2011 7:36 AM 178764 net error codes.txt
\n-a--- 11\/4\/2010 9:59 PM 246534 Sample ebook.pdf
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
I'm filtering out folders for now but the same techniques apply. PowerShell has the Rename-Item cmdlet (it has an alias of ren). All I need to do is pipe these files to Rename-Item and give each file a new name. Because I want to use the existing name as the basis for the new name, I'll have to use a ForEach-Object construct.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\ndir e:\\test | where {-Not $_.PsIscontainer -AND $_.name -match \"\\s\"} | foreach {
\n $New=$_.name.Replace(\" \",\"_\")
\n Write-Host $new -fore Cyan
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
I'll take each file and define a new name by invoking the Replace() method on the name property (which is a string), replacing the space with a _. Now I can use this value as the new name with Rename-Item.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\n Rename-Item -path $_.Fullname -newname $new -passthru -whatif
\n }
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Rename-Item supports -Whatif so I can double check the files that would be renamed. I'll also use -passthru so I can see the results. Here's the final result.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"DOS\"]
\nPS C:\\> dir e:\\test | where {-Not $_.PsIscontainer -AND $_.name -match \"\\s\"} | foreach {
\n>> $New=$_.name.Replace(\" \",\"_\")
\n>> Rename-Item -path $_.Fullname -newname $new -passthru
\n>> }
\n>><\/p>\n
Directory: E:\\test<\/p>\n
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
\n---- ------------- ------ ----
\n-a--- 10\/12\/2011 8:56 AM 31708 my_processes.txt
\n-a--- 10\/12\/2011 8:56 AM 26662 My_services.txt
\n-a--- 2\/15\/2011 7:36 AM 178764 net_error_codes.txt
\n-a--- 11\/4\/2010 9:59 PM 246534 Sample_ebook.pdf<\/p>\n
PS C:\\>
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
And there it is! Because I'm using -passthru, I omitted the Write-Host command. Be sure to read help and examples for Rename-Item and test your code on a small sample.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am not a big fan of file names with spaces. I realize they are easy to read and obviously much more “natural”, but they are simply a royal pain to deal with, especially when working from a command prompt or PowerShell. So naturally the solution is to rename these files and replace the space…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[75,8],"tags":[123,534,326,325],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-powershell-v2-0","category-scripting","tag-files","tag-powershell","tag-rename","tag-rename-item"],"yoast_head":"\n