In powershell, how can I use Rename-Item to output the old and new file names at the same time?

Question

I'd like to select a list of files using Get-ChildItem piped to Rename-Item and have the output display text with each line showing something like "Renamed oldfilename to newfilename".

How can I do this?

I'm a bit of a powershell ignoramus, so I'm floundering a little. I've played with Tee-Object and -outvariable and -passthru but to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing and this feels like it should be an easy thing to do. — James World, Sep 06 '12 at 09:47

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 06 '12 at 15:39

11

Get-Childitem C:\Temp |
    Foreach-object {
        $OldName = $_.name; 
        $NewName = $_.name -replace 'temp','test'; 
        Rename-Item -Newname $NewName; 
        Write-Output $("Renamed {0} to {1}" -f $OldName,$NewName)
        }

edited Sep 06 '12 at 15:39

khr055

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answered Sep 06 '12 at 15:17

JJ Willemen

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score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '12 at 09:52

9

One simple solution is to run rename-item with -WhatIf. This will display something like

PS H:\test> gci | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace 'temp','test' } -WhatIf
What if: Performing operation "Rename File" on Target "Item: H:\test\temp1 Destination: H:\test\test1".

Good enough, or do you need it to do it while also doing the operation?

EDIT: An even simpler solution, use -Verbose. Does the same as the -WhatIf, but also performing the operation :)

answered Sep 06 '12 at 09:52

carlpett

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Thanks for this - I'd like to get nice formatting on the output if possible. Verbose and what-if work but the output is not very readable. I will up-vote this one though. – James World Sep 06 '12 at 10:06

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 06 '12 at 10:05

4

You can do it like this:

gci . | %{ rename-item -Path $_.fullname -NewName ($_.name + 1); Write-Host "Renamed $($_.fullname) to $($_.name + 1)"}

answered Sep 06 '12 at 10:05

manojlds

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 22 '21 at 15:12

I know this is a bit old but I do have a problem with all of them. This will loop thru all the files and rename them even if the name doesn't change! That's unneeded over-head.

I've add a few more options.

    Get-ChildItem -Filter *.txt -Recurse -Path "C:\temp" | 
    Foreach-object {
        
        $OldName = $_.name; 
        $NewName = $_.name -replace 'temp','test'; 
        
        If ( $OldName -ne $NewName ){
            Rename-Item -Path $_.PSPath -Newname $NewName; 
            Write-Output $("Renamed {0} to {1}" -f $OldName,$NewName);
            }
        }

In powershell, how can I use Rename-Item to output the old and new file names at the same time?

4 Answers4