Rename of multiple files

I have many folders and in each I have potentially 480 txt files (“potentially” because in some folders some files are missing) which names changing in ascending order from:

(red number change from 1 to 10, green letter changes from “a” to “x” (24 letters) and blue number is 00 or 30).

A would like to rename file according to the following rule:

So finally, I should get:

1.txt

2.txt

3.txt

4.txt

…

47.txt

48.txt

49.txt

…

480.txt

How it could be done in matlab?

Answer 1

[Saravanan Sengottuvel]

letter = 'a':'x';
blue1 = '00'; 
blue2 = '30';
i = 1;
arr = linspace(1, 480, 480);
for id = 1:10 % loop for red number (1 to 10)
    for j = 1:24 % loop for green letters (a to x)
        if id < 10            
            f00 = strcat('aaaa00',num2str(id), letter(j),blue1,'.txt');
            f30 = strcat('aaaa00',num2str(id), letter(j),blue2,'.txt');
            try
                movefile(f00, strcat(num2str(arr(i)), '.txt'), 'f')
                i = i+1;                            
                movefile(f30, strcat(num2str(arr(i)), '.txt'), 'f') % renaming file
            catch
            end
            i = i+1;               
        else
            f00 = strcat('aaaa0',num2str(id), letter(j),blue1,'.txt');
            f30 = strcat('aaaa0',num2str(id), letter(j),blue2,'.txt');
            try
                movefile(f00, strcat(num2str(arr(i)), '.txt'), 'f')
                i = i+1;                              
                movefile(f30, strcat(num2str(arr(i)), '.txt'), 'f') % renaming red number file 10 and above
            catch
            end
            i = i+1;
        end 
    end
end

Hope the above code works for you. It maynot be the optimal solution, but it solves yours problem.

[UWM]

Thank you very much Saravanan. Now it works perfectly!

Answer 2

[Saravanan Sengottuvel]

Get the name of all files with .txt extension in a directory

files = dir('*.txt');

Run a loop over the collected file names

for id = 1:length(files)
     [~, name, ext] = fileparts(files(id).name);
     new_filename = strcat(num2str(id), ext);
     movefile(files(id).name, new_filename, 'f'); 
end

[UWM]

Thank you for your help, but...

that's not exactly what I meant though. The problem is with files which are missing e.g. if in the folder there will be no two files (e.g. aaaa001b00.txt and aaaa001b30.txt) the last one (aaaa010x30.txt) will have name 478.txt but should have: 480.txt...

Answer 3

[Jan]

SrcFolder  = 'C:\Your\Folder\';
DestFolder = 'C:\Your\Converted\Output\';
FileList = dir(fullfile(SrcFolder, 'aaaa*.txt'));  % Does this catch all wanted files?!
for k = 1:numel(FileList)
    Name = FileList(k).name;
    CCC  = sscanf(Name(5:7), '%d');
    R    = (Name(8) - 'a') * 2 + (Name(9) == '3') + 1;
    Num  = (CCC - 1) * 48 + R;
    newName = sprintf('%d.txt');
    
    fprintf('%s ==> %s\n', Name, newName);  % Does this work as expected?!
    
    Src  = fullfile(SrcFolder, Name);
    Dest = fullfile(DestFolder, newName)
    % copyfile(Src, Dest);  % Uncomment this after the code was tested
end

By the way, the file names 1.txt, 2.txt, ... is the topic of many questions in this forum. Usually '0001.txt', '0002.txt', ... is better, because then the alphabetical order equals the numerical order. Use this:

newName = sprintf('%04d.txt');