Rename multiple files in cmd

Morne picture Morne · Jun 24, 2013 · Viewed 165.8k times · Source

If I have multiple files in a directory and want to append something to their filenames, but not to the extension, how would I do this?

I have tried the following, with test files file1.txt and file2.txt:

ren *.txt *1.1.txt

This renames the files to file1.1.txt and file2.txt1.1.txt

I want the files to be file1 1.1.txt and file2 1.1.txt

Will this be possible from cmd or do I need to have a bat file to do this? What about PowerShell?

Answer

dbenham picture dbenham · Jun 24, 2013

Make sure that there are more ? than there are characters in the longest name:

ren *.txt "???????????????????????????? 1.1.txt"

See How does the Windows RENAME command interpret wildcards? for more info.

New Solution - 2014/12/01

For those who like regular expressions, there is JREN.BAT - a hybrid JScript/batch command line utility that will run on any version of Windows from XP forward.

jren "^.*(?=\.)" "$& 1.1" /fm "*.txt"

or

jren "^(.*)(\.txt)$" "$1 1.1$2" /i