Question

I am trying to write a batch script to rename multiple folders.
I would like to do something like below:
Rename all folders under the “Workspace” folder by appending my name in the end of the folder names

For example, rename:

Workspace/RiskFolder
Workspace/PNLFolder

to:

Workspace/RiskFolder_myname
Workspace/PNLFolder_myname

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You could use for to loop through each directory and rename it like so:

for /D %%f in (C:\path\to\Workspace\*) do rename "%%f" "%%~nxf_myname"

I tested this on Windows 7, but it should work at least as far back as with Windows XP.

What that does is this: for each directory in the path (within parenthesis), assign the directory name to the variable %%f, then rename the directory %%f to the name in the format you want (with your name attached). %%f holds the full pathname, which is fine for the first argument to the rename command, but for the second argument, we only want the filename+extension, thus the ~nx modifier prepended to our variable name.

By the way, when using this for loop on the command line (rather than part of a batch file) you only want to use one % instead of %% for your variable name. E.g. for %f in... instead of above.

See the following references from Microsoft for more details:

• http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/batch.mspx?mfr=true
• http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/for.mspx?mfr=true