Question

I am trying to write a small python script to rename a bunch of filenames by searching and replacing. For example:

Original filename:
MyMusic.Songname.Artist-mp3.iTunes.mp3

Intendet Result:
Songname.Artist.mp3

what i’ve got so far is:

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

mustgo = "MyMusic."
filenames = listdir('.')

for fname in fnames:
  if fname.startswith(mustgo):
    rename(fname, fname.replace(mustgo, '', 1))

(got it from this site as far as i can remember)

Anyway, this will only get rid of the String at the beginning, but not of those in the filename.

Also I would like to maybe use a seperate file (eg badwords.txt) containing all the strings that should be searched for and replaced, so that i can update them without having to edit the whole code.

Content of badwords.txt
MyMusic.
-mp3
-MP3
.iTunes
.itunes

I have been searching for quite some time now but havent found anything. Would appreciate any help!

Thank you!

Answer 1

import fnmatch
import re    
import os

with open('badwords.txt','r') as f:
    pat='|'.join(fnmatch.translate(badword)[:-1] for badword in 
                 f.read().splitlines())   

for fname in os.listdir('.'):
    new_fname=re.sub(pat,'',fname)
    if fname != new_fname:
        print('{o} --> {n}'.format(o=fname,n=new_fname))
        os.rename(fname, new_fname)

# MyMusic.Songname.Artist-mp3.iTunes.mp3 --> Songname.Artist.mp3

• Note that it is possible for some files to be overwritten (and thus
  lost) if two names get reduced to the same shortened name after
  badwords have been removed. A set of new fnames could be kept and
  checked before calling os.rename to prevent losing data through
  name collisions.
• fnmatch.translate takes shell-style patterns and returns the
  equivalent regular expression. It is used above to convert badwords
  (e.g. '.iTunes') into regular expressions (e.g. r'\.iTunes').

• Your badwords list seems to indicate you want to ignore case. You
  could ignore case by adding '(?i)' to the beginning of pat:

  with open('badwords.txt','r') as f:
     pat='(?i)'+'|'.join(fnmatch.translate(badword)[:-1] for badword in 
                         f.read().splitlines())