rename-item and override if filename exists

Question

I am trying to use the Rename-Item cmdlet to do the following:

I have folder which contains "*.txt" files. Let's say 1.txt, 2.txt etc...

I want to copy files that have some prefix, rename them to *.txt and override any existing files if there are any.

example:

folder: c:\TEST

files : 1.txt, 2.txt, 3.txt, 4.txt, 5.txt, index.1.txt, index.2.txt, index.3.txt, index.4.txt, index.5.txt

I want to use rename-item to filter any index.*.txt and rename them to *.txt, and if the same file exists, replace it.

Thank you guys

Regalado

Have you tried the -force switch ? – Niggle

@PeterSchneider Force wont work in that way with Rename-Item as you would still get Cannot create a file when that file already exists. – Splotch

You might use [System.IO.File]::Copy($sourcefile,$targetfile,$true); - The $true overwrites the existing file... – Niggle

Are you just asking about the rename process or the logic to determine the new name? – Splotch

Ive tried the -Force. I just need to know whether there is an option to rename file from A to B, and if B exists, override it with the newly renamed A to B. – Regalado

Answer 1

As noted by @lytledw, Move-Item -Force works great for renaming and overwriting files.

To replace the index. part of the name, you can use the -replace regex operator:

Get-ChildItem index.*.txt |ForEach-Object {
    $NewName = $_.Name -replace "^(index\.)(.*)",'$2'
    $Destination = Join-Path -Path $_.Directory.FullName -ChildPath $NewName
    Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $Destination -Force
}

Manic

With slight modifications the "Move-Item" did the trick! Cheers ! – Regalado

I wanted to rename thousands of duplicate files that resulted from migrating my music library to a new PC from multiple backup locations, one of which automatically appended a date stamp to the filenames. I used this answer with some modifications, viz.: ` C:\Users\reyje\music\itunes\itunes media\music> Get-ChildItem "(2017_12_14.*" -recurse |ForEach-Object { >> $NewName = $_.Name -replace " (2017_12_14 17_50_59 UTC)",'' >> $Destination = Join-Path -Path $_.Directory.FullName -ChildPath $NewName >> Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $Destination -Force >> }` – Barrault

The idea was to replace the literal string " (2017_12_14 17_50_59 UTC)" with nothing--the '' are two single quotation marks with nothing between them. This worked for the vast majority of the files, but for each file with square brackets in its name or path, I got errors like this: Move-Item : Cannot retrieve the dynamic parameters for the cmdlet. The specified wildcard character pattern is not valid: 09 09 Old Purple Tin [9% of Pure Hea (2017_12_14 17_50_59 UTC).m4a At line:4 char:7 + Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $Destination -Force + – Barrault

It seems counter-intuitive to me that characters inside a file name that is not typed would not be treated as literal string characters. – Barrault

Answer 2

I tried the rename-item -force and it did not work. However, I was able to do move-item -force and it worked fine

Bilodeau

The op is asking more than one question but that is the solution for the first one. – Splotch