function to Rename file using wild card character like ren *.dat to *.txt

Hi deepakg76,

there is no such function in ANSI C ... you can perhaps try system ("rename ... ");

Cheers!
Sunny:o)

Linux tools will let you make this change with a single command:

rename .dat .txt *.dat

Windows has no such equivalent, you'll have to write a program or script to do this.

Kent

for i in `ls directory_name`
do
     mv $i.dat $.txt
done

will convert all dat files in a directory to txt files (extensions)

Hi Ajar,

Nice code, written quickly.  :)

It does miss files with two periods.  "2003.11.12_TestScores.dat"  will be missed do to the test finding the first period.


  temp = strchr (file_name, '.');
  temp1 = temp;
  while (temp1)
  {
    temp1 = strchr (temp1);
    if (temp1)
      temp = temp1;
  }


should solve that.
Kent

not sure about windows atm, but I used scandir() under Unix to get the expressions for what I needed.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include <string.h>

int my_sort( const void *_a, const void *_b)
{
    struct dirent **a = (struct dirent **)_a;
    struct dirent **b = (struct dirent **)_b;

    return(strcmp((*a)->d_name,(*b)->d_name));
}

int my_select( const struct dirent *a )
{
    char *cs = NULL;

        //printf("%s\n", a->d_name);
    cs = strrchr(a->d_name, '.');
    if (cs == NULL)
        return 0;

    if (strcasecmp(cs,".dat") == 0)
        return 1;

    return 0;
}


int main( void )
{
     struct dirent **namelist;
     int n = 0;

     n = scandir(".", &namelist, my_select, my_sort);
     if (n < 0)
     {
          fprintf(stderr, "Error: Scandir()\n");
          exit(1);
     }

     while ( n--)
     {
     // you rename code for namelist[n]->d_name
     printf("%s\n", namelist[n]->d_name);
     }

     return 0;
}

this will handle all files like....

1.dat
1.2.3.dat


etc...

the my_sort() is just there for a complete example, you can just use alphasort() if you wish