Question

Renaming File Extensions Recursively

Asked by: NigelRocks

Experts,

I have a directory with many subdirectories, all of which contain files with a .dta extension.  I'd like to rename the files in the parent directory and all its children to another file extension.

How can I do this?

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Asked On
2009-02-12 at 12:39:59ID24138878
Tags

Windows XP

,

DOS

Topics

Design & Methodology

,

DOS and Windows

,

MS DOS

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500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: AmazingTechPosted on 2009-02-12 at 13:36:52ID: 23627121

Try this batch file when the output looks correct remove the echo to have it actually rename the files.

for /f %%a in ('dir /a-d /s /b "C:\Folder\*.dta"') do echo ren "%%a" "%%~na.txt"

                                              
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by: AmazingTechPosted on 2009-02-12 at 13:38:28ID: 23627143

Or we could just use *.txt

Replace the .txt with the extension you want to change it to.

for /f %%a in ('dir /a-d /s /b "C:\Folder\*.dta"') do echo ren "%%a" "*.txt"
 
                                              
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by: oBdAPosted on 2009-02-12 at 14:13:14ID: 23627531

Sorry, but this will fail with any file or folder containing a space.
That could be fixed with a "delims=", but why is everybody using "for /f" to scan files in subfolders anyway, when there's a native "for" command to do so?

for /r "C:\Test" %a in (*.dta) do ren "%a" "%~na.bla"

/r will *r*ecurse subdirectories, "C:\Test" is the folder to start the search in (current folder will be used if not specified), "*.dta" is the file mask to search for, "%~na" expands "%a" to only the *n*ame. "bla" is whatever you want to use as extension.
The command above is for direct input in the shell. For use in a batch script, just double up on the percent signs:

for /r "C:\Test" %%a in (*.dta) do ren "%%a" "%%~na.bla"

 

by: AmazingTechPosted on 2009-02-12 at 14:31:11ID: 23627724

oBdA you're right I sometimes forget to put in the "tokens=* delims="

for /f "Tokens=* Delims=" %%a in ('dir /a-d /s /b "C:\Folder\*.dta"') do echo ren "%%a" "*.txt"

                                              
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by: NigelRocksPosted on 2009-02-13 at 06:20:12ID: 23632833

It didn't work and I didn't get any error messages.  The screen seems to indicate that everything went as planned, but all the file extensions are the same.

Ideas?

 

 

by: NigelRocksPosted on 2009-02-13 at 06:26:22ID: 23632882

May bad.  It forgot about taking out the ECHO.  Works like a charm.  Thanks, gents.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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