node-rn

a handy file renaming tool

Install globally with npm:

npm i -g node-rn

TLDR; simple usage

Let's assume you have 3 pdf files in your directory:

a-slides.pdf 
b-slides.pdf
c-slide.pdf 

Then:

rn '*-slides' 's-*' *.pdf --go

will rename only the first two files, leaving untouched the extensions:

s-a.pdf 
s-b.pdf
c-slide.pdf

If you omit --go, it will only print the new filenames without actually changing them.

To avoid backticks around the first two patterns, you can use a question mark ?:

rn ?-slides s-? *.pdf --go

You can include the extension in the renaming with -x. For example:

rn -x '*.pdf' '*.pdfx' *.pdf --go

will change the extensions of each file:

a-slides.pdfx 
b-slides.pdfx
c-slide.pdfx

Additional keyword substitutions

The target filename rule can include one or more keywords:

• $..0N: will translate to the file sequence number (padding configurable)
• $D{date format}: will translate to the creation date formatted as specified. It uses momentjs format.
• $E: will translate to the extension of the file (noext if missing)
• $K: will translate to the value specified with the -k option

Example:

rn -x -k my_keyword '*.pdf' '$E/s-$K-$000N.pdf' $srcdir/*.pdf

will create a folder for each extension found (pdf in this case), and rename the files as follows:

• a-slides.pdf to pdf/s-my_keyword-000.pdf
• b-slides.pdf to pdf/s-my_keyword-001.pdf
• c-slide.pdf to pdf/s-my_keyword-002.pdf

Finally, you can post-process all filenames with an underscore.string function; eg. :

rn '*' '*' *.pdf -t 'classify'

would yield:

ASlides.pdf
BSlides.pdf
CSlide.pdf

Possible functions are: classify, underscored, camelized, (de)capitalize. Check underscore.string for all the other possibilities; the function must receive a string and return a string.

For using pre-saved templates see the sections below:

General help

Usage:
    rn -l | --list 
    rn -u NAME [ -k KEY ] [ -x ] [ -g ] [ -v ] FILES ...
    rn FROM TO [ -k KEY ] [ -x ] [ -g ] [ -v ] [ -t T ] FILES ...
    rn -h | --help 

Options:
    -g, --go            Execute rename, otherwise is dry-run
    -u, --use NAME      Use template stored as NAME in $HOME/.rnc
    -l, --list          Show templates
    -k, --key KEY       Define a keyword to be used in the TO pattern as $K
    -x, --ext           Interpret extension as part of the substitution pattern 
    -v, --verbose       Additional info
    -t, --transform T   Underscore.string function to apply at the end.

Templates

Renaming templates are stored in ~/.rnc in JSON format. This file is a JSON map from template names to template data. For example, this is a rule that I named as kelby, since I've read about it in a book about Lightroom written by Scott Kelby; it renames all the files (by preserving the extensions) with the creation date, a keyword (specified with -k in the command line) and a sequence number:

"kelby": {
        "name": "kelby",
        "from": "*",
        "to": "$D{YYMMDD}_$K_$000N",
        "description": "This was described in Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom"
    }

It can be invoked in this way:

rn -u 'kelby' -k my_keyword *.pdf

renaming all the pdf files according to the template.

There is a bunch of already made and usable templates in the distribution of rn so check them out. You can list them with rn -l:

Available patterns

name      from  to                              description                                            opts           
--------  ----  ------------------------------  -----------------------------------------------------  ---------------
kelby     *     $D{YYMMDD}_$K_$000N             This was described in Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom                 
kelbyf    *     $D{YYMMDD}/$D{YYMMDD}_$K_$000N  As kelby, but creates a folder with creation date                     
bigfold   *     $D{YYMMDD}_$000N_*              This is what you would use in a big folder.            fn: underscored
download  *     $E/*                            Organize your Download folder, once and for all        fn: underscored

Author

Vittorio Zaccaria

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Vittorio Zaccaria
Released under the BSD license

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This file was generated by verb on January 13, 2015.