CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsrecursionbatch-filerename
Raiden616
Raiden616

Reputation: 1564

Mass rename of file extensions recursively (windows batch)

I have numerous files in a very complex directory structure, and for reasons not worth discussing I need to rename all files with the extension of ".inp" to have ".TXT" extensions. There are numerous other files with other extensions that I do not want to be touched, and I want to do it recursively down at least 5 levels.

So far I have:

for /d %%x in (*) do pushd %%x & Ren *.inp *.TXT & popd

...but this only goes down one level of directories.

Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 24

Views: 37293

Answers (4)

Luis Costa
Luis Costa

Reputation: 171

Sometimes the renaming is necessary to change invalid characters inside the files and names. If you need to change a single character recursively:

Change character "╞" for "ã" in folder names recursively:

FOR /R /D %x in (*╞*) do @for /f "tokens=1-3* delims=╞" %B in ("%x") DO ren "%x" "%~nBã%C"

Change character "╞" for "ã" in file names recursively:

FOR /R %x in (*╞*.*) do @for /f "tokens=1-3* delims=╞" %B in ("%x") DO ren "%x" "%~nBã%C"

Change the chars for whatever you need. If you want to test your renaming commands before executing, just put an @echo between DO and ren:

DO @echo ren "%x" "%~nBã%C"

This will output the commands instead of executing them

Upvotes: 0

Roger Hill
Roger Hill

Reputation: 4099

John Smith's answer is excellent, and it works. But to be completely clear (I had to re-read magoo's notes to figure out the correct syntax), here is exactly what you need to do...

BATCH FILE:
FOR /R %%x IN (*.js) DO ren "%%x" *.txt

COMMAND LINE:
FOR /R %x IN (*.js) DO ren "%x" *.txt

Up vote their responses, I am but a lowly formater...

Upvotes: 7

Magoo
Magoo

Reputation: 80023

for /r startdir %%i in (*.inp) do ECHO ren "%%i" "%%~ni.txt"

should work for you. Replace startdir with your starting directoryname and when you've checked this works to your satisfaction, remove the echo before the ren to actually do the rename.

For the downvoters: executing a batch file differs from excuting from the command prompt in that each %%x where x is the metavariable (loop-control variable) needs to be reduced to %, so

for /r startdir %i in (*.inp) do ECHO ren "%i" "%~ni.txt"

should work if you execute this from the prompt. Please read the note about echo.

Upvotes: 30

john smith
john smith

Reputation: 568

On Windows 7, the following one-line command works for me, to rename all files, recursively, in *.js to *.txt:

FOR /R %x IN (*.js) DO ren "%x" *.txt

Upvotes: 46

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