How can I delimitate a string at runtime?

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

I am looking to write a utility to batch rename a bunch of files at once using a regular expression. The files that I will be renaming all at once follow a certain naming convention, and I want to alter them to a new naming convention using data that's already in the filenames; but not all my files follow the same convention currently.

So I want to be able to write a general use program that lets me input into a textbox during runtime the pattern of the filename, and what tokens I want to extract from the filename to use for renaming.

For example - Assume I have one file named as such:

[Coalgirls]_Suite_Precure_02_(1280x720_Blu-Ray_FLAC)_[33D74D55].mkv

I want to be able to rename this file to:

Suite Precure - Ep 02 [Coalgirls][33D74D55].mkv

This means I would preferably be able to enter into my program before renaming something akin to

[%group%]_Suite_Precure_%ep%_(...)_[%crc%].mkv

and it would populate the local variables "group", "ep", and "crc" to use in the batch rename.

How might I approach this?

Posted 15-Dec-12 13:44pm

agent154

Add a Solution

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Dec-12 21:43pm

A couple of comments: 1. Matroska is a great thing. 2. You may not like my view, but I would advise: if you want to make a really good usable renamer, make it command-line based, perhaps console only. I would hardly even consider using anything with GUI for such task (but many would disagree).
—SA

2 solutions

Solution 1

Use the Regular expression groups:

\[(?<publisher>.*?)\]_Suite_Precure_(?<ep>\d+)_\((?<group>.*?)\)_\[(?<crc>.*?)\].mkv</crc></group></ep></publisher>

This produces 4 groups, so your example becomes:

Publisher   CoalGirls
Ep          02
Group       12080x720_Blu-Ray_FLAC
CRC         33D74D55

You can then use these in the Regex.Replace to generate the new name:

${Group}_Suite_Precure_${Ep}_(${Publisher})_[${CRC}].mkv

Produces

1280x720_Blu-Ray_FLAC_Suite_Precure_02_(Coalgirls)_[33D74D55].mkv

However, that is not very user friendly! But it is not easy to do it in a friendly way - you need to specify which "chunks" are which group - which means specifying the start and end sequences, and what to "throw away"

(I had a similar problem when renaming large numbers of files, and ended up writing a GUI interface which helped, but frankly was still a PITA to use.)

Posted 15-Dec-12 21:16pm

OriginalGriff

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Matt T Heffron · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-17T07:30:00

Solution 2

Check out http://www.mobzystems.com/tools/RegName.aspx[^].
The source code is on CodePlex.

Posted 17-Dec-12 7:30am

Matt T Heffron

Comments

agent154 17-Dec-12 23:15pm

That tool does exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you very much.