Rename multiple files in a directory in Python

Question

I'm trying to rename some files in a directory using Python.

Say I have a file called CHEESE_CHEESE_TYPE.*** and want to remove CHEESE_ so my resulting filename would be CHEESE_TYPE

I'm trying to use the os.path.split but it's not working properly. I have also considered using string manipulations, but have not been successful with that either.

Your needle is not in the haystack, your haystack has a wildcard, and even ignoring case your result cannot come from that haystack. Care to clean up the question a bit? — Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, May 03 '10 at 15:19
Ok, I'll try to clear it up as best I can. I have a folder of files that all are named something like cheese_cheese_type.prj (all have the same first 15 chars, but different trailing 4 chars & extensions) Im trying to remove the first 8 charecters from the filename (in the example, 'cheese_' would be removed and the resulting filename would be cheese_type.prj so what Im trying to do is walk the directory, split the file names, and remove the first 8 characters from the filename. in would be cheese_cheese_type.prj out would be cheese_type.prj Thanks! — Jeff, May 03 '10 at 15:28
Similar to, but not the same as [How to rename a file using Python](https://stackoverflow.com/q/2491222/7758804) — Trenton McKinney, Jun 28 '22 at 20:00

Messa · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-20T22:07:01.003

650

Use os.rename(src, dst) to rename or move a file or a directory.

$ ls
cheese_cheese_type.bar  cheese_cheese_type.foo
$ python
>>> import os
>>> for filename in os.listdir("."):
...  if filename.startswith("cheese_"):
...    os.rename(filename, filename[7:])
... 
>>> 
$ ls
cheese_type.bar  cheese_type.foo

edited Jan 20 '17 at 22:07

answered May 03 '10 at 15:25

Messa

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Im getting an error from windows saying it cant find the file, and it's not doing anything...any tips? – Jeff May 03 '10 at 15:49
5

@Jeff I found it much easier to save the script and place it in the directory I would be running it in. This way, the os.rename method works correctly. The disadvantage is you might end up renaming the script itself. Instead of using `.` as the dir, you could make a variable called `dir` and use that, then prepend `dir` to the `filename`. – styfle May 18 '11 at 05:53
18

you got the "can't find file' because filename isn't the absolute path. Explicitly call path and os.path.join(path, filename) prior to calling the rename and it will work. – GoingTharn Oct 25 '11 at 17:32
5

its better to have full path with the filename passed to os.rename rather than just a file name only. – Ciasto piekarz Dec 07 '13 at 07:31

bukzor · Answer 2 · 2010-05-03T15:43:08.477

39

Here's a script based on your newest comment.

#!/usr/bin/env python
from os import rename, listdir

badprefix = "cheese_"
fnames = listdir('.')

for fname in fnames:
    if fname.startswith(badprefix*2):
        rename(fname, fname.replace(badprefix, '', 1))

edited May 03 '10 at 15:43

answered May 03 '10 at 15:22

bukzor

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Yogeesh Seralathan · Answer 3 · 2015-12-11T23:28:36.467

25

The following code should work. It takes every filename in the current directory, if the filename contains the pattern CHEESE_CHEESE_ then it is renamed. If not nothing is done to the filename.

import os
for fileName in os.listdir("."):
    os.rename(fileName, fileName.replace("CHEESE_CHEESE_", "CHEESE_"))

edited Dec 11 '15 at 23:28

answered Jul 17 '14 at 05:58

Yogeesh Seralathan

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score 16 · Answer 4 · answered May 03 '10 at 15:54

Assuming you are already in the directory, and that the "first 8 characters" from your comment hold true always. (Although "CHEESE_" is 7 characters... ? If so, change the 8 below to 7)

from glob import glob
from os import rename
for fname in glob('*.prj'):
    rename(fname, fname[8:])

score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 08 '15 at 21:15

I have the same issue, where I want to replace the white space in any pdf file to a dash -. But the files were in multiple sub-directories. So, I had to use os.walk(). In your case for multiple sub-directories, it could be something like this:

import os
for dpath, dnames, fnames in os.walk('/path/to/directory'):
    for f in fnames:
        os.chdir(dpath)
        if f.startswith('cheese_'):
            os.rename(f, f.replace('cheese_', ''))

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited May 16 '13 at 12:03

7

Try this:

import os
import shutil

for file in os.listdir(dirpath):
    newfile = os.path.join(dirpath, file.split("_",1)[1])
    shutil.move(os.path.join(dirpath,file),newfile)

I'm assuming you don't want to remove the file extension, but you can just do the same split with periods.

edited May 16 '13 at 12:03

Lake

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answered May 03 '10 at 15:35

krs1

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overriding the builtin 'file' is generally bad practice. – bukzor May 03 '10 at 15:47
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@bukzor 7 years later, I'll expand on that: "overriding builtins is generally bad practice." – JakeD Apr 17 '17 at 02:43

Erik Kaplun · Answer 7 · 2014-03-24T18:08:21.717

6

This sort of stuff is perfectly fitted for IPython, which has shell integration.

In [1] files = !ls
In [2] for f in files:
           newname = process_filename(f)
           mv $f $newname

Note: to store this in a script, use the .ipy extension, and prefix all shell commands with !.

See also: http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/stable/interactive/shell.html

edited Mar 24 '14 at 18:08

answered Oct 01 '13 at 20:47

Erik Kaplun

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What does each line do? – ScottyBlades May 16 '20 at 02:03

score 5 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 25 '14 at 11:01

Here is a more general solution:

This code can be used to remove any particular character or set of characters recursively from all filenames within a directory and replace them with any other character, set of characters or no character.

import os

paths = (os.path.join(root, filename)
        for root, _, filenames in os.walk('C:\FolderName')
        for filename in filenames)

for path in paths:
    # the '#' in the example below will be replaced by the '-' in the filenames in the directory
    newname = path.replace('#', '-')
    if newname != path:
        os.rename(path, newname)

Lloyd · Answer 9 · 2018-07-18T09:39:47.920

4

This command will remove the initial "CHEESE_" string from all the files in the current directory, using renamer:

$ renamer --find "/^CHEESE_/" *

edited Jul 18 '18 at 09:39

answered Sep 23 '13 at 17:16

Lloyd

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npm (JavaScript) ≠ python. One might as well link to the Perl [rename](http://search.cpan.org/~rmbarker/File-Rename-0.20/rename.PL "rename") command. – scruss Sep 23 '14 at 23:47

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered May 03 '10 at 15:23

It seems that your problem is more in determining the new file name rather than the rename itself (for which you could use the os.rename method).

It is not clear from your question what the pattern is that you want to be renaming. There is nothing wrong with string manipulation. A regular expression may be what you need here.

score 4 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 04 '16 at 19:04

import os import string def rename_files():

#List all files in the directory
file_list = os.listdir("/Users/tedfuller/Desktop/prank/")
print(file_list)

#Change current working directory and print out it's location
working_location = os.chdir("/Users/tedfuller/Desktop/prank/")
working_location = os.getcwd()
print(working_location)

#Rename all the files in that directory
for file_name in file_list:
    os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate(str.maketrans("","",string.digits)))

rename_files()

ccpizza · Answer 12 · 2016-04-16T19:37:49.927

I was originally looking for some GUI which would allow renaming using regular expressions and which had a preview of the result before applying changes.

On Linux I have successfully used krename, on Windows Total Commander does renaming with regexes, but I found no decent free equivalent for OSX, so I ended up writing a python script which works recursively and by default only prints the new file names without making any changes. Add the '-w' switch to actually modify the file names.

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import os
import fnmatch
import sys
import shutil
import re


def usage():
    print """
Usage:
        %s <work_dir> <search_regex> <replace_regex> [-w|--write]

        By default no changes are made, add '-w' or '--write' as last arg to actually rename files
        after you have previewed the result.
        """ % (os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))


def rename_files(directory, search_pattern, replace_pattern, write_changes=False):

    pattern_old = re.compile(search_pattern)

    for path, dirs, files in os.walk(os.path.abspath(directory)):

        for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, "*.*"):

            if pattern_old.findall(filename):
                new_name = pattern_old.sub(replace_pattern, filename)

                filepath_old = os.path.join(path, filename)
                filepath_new = os.path.join(path, new_name)

                if not filepath_new:
                    print 'Replacement regex {} returns empty value! Skipping'.format(replace_pattern)
                    continue

                print new_name

                if write_changes:
                    shutil.move(filepath_old, filepath_new)
            else:
                print 'Name [{}] does not match search regex [{}]'.format(filename, search_pattern)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv) < 4:
        usage()
        sys.exit(-1)

    work_dir = sys.argv[1]
    search_regex = sys.argv[2]
    replace_regex = sys.argv[3]
    write_changes = (len(sys.argv) > 4) and sys.argv[4].lower() in ['--write', '-w']
    rename_files(work_dir, search_regex, replace_regex, write_changes)

Example use case

I want to flip parts of a file name in the following manner, i.e. move the bit m7-08 to the beginning of the file name:

# Before:
Summary-building-mobile-apps-ionic-framework-angularjs-m7-08.mp4

# After:
m7-08_Summary-building-mobile-apps-ionic-framework-angularjs.mp4

This will perform a dry run, and print the new file names without actually renaming any files:

rename_files_regex.py . "([^\.]+?)-(m\\d+-\\d+)" "\\2_\\1"

This will do the actual renaming (you can use either -w or --write):

rename_files_regex.py . "([^\.]+?)-(m\\d+-\\d+)" "\\2_\\1" --write

Here's another script, you can write `replacement_functions` for it, and run them, and for each of them it will show you a preview of the changes that will be made, with the differences highlighted with colors, and ask for confirmation https://gist.github.com/aljgom/81e8e4ca9584b481523271b8725448b8 — aljgom, Oct 09 '18 at 02:19

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Jan 11 '16 at 05:06

2

You can use os.system function for simplicity and to invoke bash to accomplish the task:

import os
os.system('mv old_filename new_filename')

answered Jan 11 '16 at 05:06

This only works on posix systems. – Charles Plager Apr 04 '16 at 20:20

score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Apr 16 '17 at 20:43

2

This works for me.

import os
for afile in os.listdir('.'):
    filename, file_extension = os.path.splitext(afile)
    if not file_extension == '.xyz':
        os.rename(afile, filename + '.abc')

answered Apr 16 '17 at 20:43

edib

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered May 03 '10 at 15:34

0

What about this :

import re
p = re.compile(r'_')
p.split(filename, 1) #where filename is CHEESE_CHEESE_TYPE.***

answered May 03 '10 at 15:34

Bandan

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This does not answer the question! – Nov 15 '17 at 14:33

Rename multiple files in a directory in Python

15 Answers15

Example use case

What about this :

Linked

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