Replace exact part of file name with Powershell

Question

I tried the code found here without success.

What I need is to replace an exact text with another, but this code doesn't seem to deal with exact text.

This is the code I used, and what I need is, for example, for a file name that ends with ".L.wav" to be replaced with "_L.wav", but what happens is that powershell tries to rename even the file that ends with ".BL.wav" into "_L.wav".

Thank you.

ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".L.wav","_L.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".LFE.wav","_LFE.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".R.wav","_R.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".BL.wav","_LSR.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".BR.wav","_RSR.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".SL.wav","_LSS.wav"}
ls *.* | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.name -replace ".SR.wav","_RSS.wav"}
Read-Host -Prompt "Press Enter to exit" ```

I have removed your [batch-file] tag. Your linked question and answer, as well as everything you've posted, does not mention or imply a Windows batch file with an extension of .bat or .cmd. Please do not use tags which will waste the time of those who are specifically watching those, a batch file scripter for instance, may have no idea whatsoever about scripting with PowerShell. — Compo
– Compo, Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 20:07

Theo · Accepted Answer · 2021-08-06 20:13:25Z

3

The dot in regex means Any Character. Without escaping that, things go wrong.

Try

Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace ('{0}$' -f [regex]::Escape('.L.wav')),'_L.wav'}

or manually escape the regex metacharacters:

Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '\.L\.wav$','_L.wav'}

^{The $ at the end anchors the text to match at the end on the string}

Also, instead of doing ls *.* | Rename-Item {...}, better use

(Get-ChildItem -Filter '*.L.wav' -File) | Rename-Item {...}

(ls is alias to Get-ChildItem )

Using the -Filter you can specify what files you're looking for.
Using the -File switch, you make sure you do not also try to rename folder objects.
By surrounding the Get-ChildItem part of the code in brackets, you make sure the gathering of the files is complete before you start renaming them. Otherwise, chances are the code will try and keep renaming files that are already processed.

edited Aug 6, 2021 at 20:13

answered Aug 6, 2021 at 19:58

Theo

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4 Comments

Santiago Squarzon Over a year ago

I didn't know about your last point, so you could end up with an endless loop ?

Theo Over a year ago

@SantiagoSquarzon Well, probably not endless, but this is a 'gotcha' when using Get-ChildItem and immediately start renaming the files while iterating them through the pipeline. The next iteration, Get-ChildItem sees the altered files as 'new' and passes them through again. Using brackets is one way of stopping that. You could also do $thefiles = Get-ChildItem ... and then loop through using foreach ($file in $thefiles){...}

Theo Over a year ago

@SantiagoSquarzon Of course, you wouldn't need that if you renamed them in such a way that the -Filter will not accept them, but it is easy enough to get weird results..

winoni71 Over a year ago

Thank you @Theo, I tried this and it worked perfectly right away.

(Get-ChildItem -Filter '*.L.wav' -File) | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace ('{0}$' -f [regex]::Escape('.L.wav')),'_L.wav'}

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