Question

What I want to do is rename all file in a particular folder, such that if a filename contains any digit in it, it is removed.

say, if a filename is
someFileName.someExtension it remains the same, but if a file is like this,
03 - Rocketman Elton John it should be renamed to Rocketman Elton John (I did the part to remove the -), another example, if the filename is 15-Trey Songz - Unfortunate (Prod. by Noah 40 Shebib) it should be renamed to Trey Songz Unfortunate (Prod. by Noah Shebib) (again I can remove -). The user is asked to select the folder like this

private void txtFolder_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            FolderBrowserDialog fd = new FolderBrowserDialog();
            fd.RootFolder = Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop;
            fd.ShowNewFolderButton = true;
            if (fd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
            {
                txtFolder.Text = fd.SelectedPath;
            }
        }

Also, it renaming starts like this

private void btnGo_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    StartRenaming(txtFolder.Text);
}

and

private void StartRenaming(string FolderName)
{
   string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(FolderName);
   foreach (string file in files)
        RenameFile(file);
}

Now in rename file, I need the function, the regular expression that will remove any number(s) in file.
Its is implemented as

private void RenameFile(string FileName)
{
    string fileName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(FileName);
   /* here the function goes that will find numbers in filename using regular experssion and replace them */ 
}

so what I can do is, I can use something like

1  var matches = Regex.Matches(fileName, @"\d+");
2  
3  if (matches.Count == 0)
4    return null;
5
6  // start the loop
7  foreach(var match in matches)
8  {
9     fileName = fileName.Replace(match, ""); /* or fileName.Replace(match.ToString(), ""), whatever be the case */    
10 }
11  File.Move(FileName, Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(FileName), fileName));
12  return;

But I don’t think that’s the right way to do it? Is there any better option to do this? or is this the best (and only option) to do this? Also, is there anything like IN in String.Replace? Say in sql I can use IN in a select command and specify a bunch of where conditions, but is there something like this with String.Replace so that I don’t have to run the loop I ran from line 7 to 10? Are there any other better options?

ps: about that regex, I posted a question Regular Expression for numbers? (apparently I wasn’t clear enough) and from that I got my regex, if you think someother regex would do better please tell me, also if you need any other information please let me know…

Answer 1

For replacing you should look into Regex.Replace which can replace all occurences at once.

Otherwise code look ok (with exception of strange fileName.Replace("match", "") which uses constant string…)