How do I rename sound files in a folder?

I have 100 sounds in a folder under bad names and I want rename each sound to "stim1", "stim2", ect... How do rename these sounds in matlab?

Answer 1

[OCDER]

Use movefile to rename a file from BAD_NAME --> GOOD_NAME. But, BACKUP YOUR FILES before doing this for the first time! Bugs can be costly x.x

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/movefile.html

Use dir, fullfile, and maybe regexprep to find and replace filename string, before using movefile. Here's an example to get you started.

A = dir('**/*.wav');
for j = 1:length(A)
  % If your bad file name has a sequence ID #, like Bad_121_blah.wav, extract "121" first via regexp.
  % Ex: Bad_121 -> stim121.wav, figure out how to extract "121" via regexp(BadName, '\d+', 'match')
  BadNameNum = regexp(A(j).name, '\d+', 'match');
  GoodName = sprintf('stim%s.wav', BadNameNum{1});
  movefile(fullfile(A(j).folder, A(j).name)), fullfile(A(j).folder, GoodName));
end