renaming files with powershell or for loop …

i have a directory of scripts with names like mom_myScript.vbs or sms_myScript.vbs.  this is all so that i can do a relatively simple directory search to see what kind of scripts i have for a particular technology i’m working with.  the problem is, i flip-flip on my use of hyphens and underscores and have apparently done it often enough to warrant a little a clean up.

first, the old way i would have done this in cmd shell.  it’s basically a for loop to go through the list of files in a directory that matches where the script has a hyphen.  to pull back just the file name, i’m using the dir /b command.  i’ve broken down the file name into tokens that’s separated by the hyphen and then renaming the files, positioning underscore between the tokens.

for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=-" %a in ('dir /b mom-*.*') do @ren %a-%b %a_%b

 

here’s my new, preferred way to do it in powershell.  basically, i’m pulling back the list of files i want to work with and passing it through to the rename-item cmdlet.  the script block here is pretty cool.  i can run a replace on the fly which doesn’t require any token breakdowns, etc.

dir mom-*.* | ren -NewName {$_.Name –replace 'mom-','mom_'}