rename files using matlab

Hello all,

I have a folder on my desktop that has 10 text files as following:

A.txt
Abgd.txt
B.txt
Bbgd.txt
C.txt
Cbgd.txt
S.txt
Sbgd.txt
std.txt
stdbgd.txt

I want to write a code that the changes the names of the first 8 files. I want to rename these files and add an underline (i.e. '_') after the first letterof each file. So my output should look like this:

A_.txt
A_bgd.txt
B_.txt
B_bgd.txt
C_.txt
C_bgd.txt
S_.txt
S_bgd.txt

Here is what I have done so far:

 clear all; clc;
 d = 'C:\Users\krraz\Desktop\Day13\*.txt';
 oldnames = dir(d);
 oldnames = {oldnames(~[oldnames.isdir]).name};
 L = length(oldnames);
 oldnames = oldnames(1:L-2);

 points = oldnames(1:2:end);
 points = cellfun(@(x) x(1:1), points, 'UniformOutput', false);
 strr = '_.txt'; strr = string(strr);
 for n = 1:numel(points)
 formatSpec = '%1$s%2$s';
 points{n} = sprintf(formatSpec,points{n},strr);
 end

 bgds = oldnames(2:2:end);
 bgds = cellfun(@(x) x(1:1), bgds, 'UniformOutput', false);
 strr = '_bgd.txt'; strr = string(strr);
 for n = 1:numel(bgds)
 formatSpec = '%1$s%2$s';
 bgds{n} = sprintf(formatSpec,bgds{n},strr);
 end

 newnames = [points bgds];
 newnames = sort(newnames);

 for j=1:numel(oldnames)
 movefile(d,newnames{j},'f');
 end

But when I run my code, It generates a new folder on my desktop and doesn't change the names of the files. What am I doing wrong?

Any insight will be appreciated.

[Ramanaesh Rao]

Hello, good day. I have a similar question. I just wanted to add the word 'cropped' at the end of my basefile name

my old file name:

BOX1 7CFU-GM D14 65 4x
BOX1 7CFU-GM D14 65 10x
BOX3 7CFU-PB D7 1 20x
BOX3 7CFU-PB D7 1 40x
BOX1 5CFU-GM D14 1 4x
BOX1 5CFU-GM D14 1 40x

the file name i wanted:

BOX1 7CFU-GM D14 65 4x cropped
BOX1 7CFU-GM D14 65 10x cropped
BOX3 7CFU-PB D7 1 20x cropped
BOX3 7CFU-PB D7 1 40x cropped
BOX1 5CFU-GM D14 1 4x cropped
BOX1 5CFU-GM D14 1 40x cropped

Thank you in advance.

[Walter Roberson]

%our dir() pulls in the names of all files, including those already cropped
%so we need to remove the 'cropped' ones from the list to process.

dinfo = dir('BOX*');
filenames = {dinfo.name};
is_it_cropped = contains(filenames, 'cropped');

filenames = filenames(~is_it_cropped);
nfiles = length(filenames);

for K = 1 : nfiles
    thisfile = filenames{K};
    [~, basename, ext] = fileparts(thisfile);
    newname = [basename ' cropped' ext];
    img = imread(thisfile);
    newimg = imcrop(img, [50 50 600 600]);   %use appropriate cropping here
    imwrite(newimg, newname);
end

[Ramanaesh Rao]

Tq very much sir/madam

[Luke Blades]

Hello, I also have a question like this. In my file the files all have random names. I want to rename all the files as follow;

a0001, a0002... a0010, a0011... a0100, a0101... etc.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Walter Roberson]

@Luke Blades

The files that currently exist, what order are they to be renamed? Does 5CFU-GM.txt go before or after 05BHZ.D.2018.246.000000.txt ?

Are they to be renamed in the same directory? If so then it is a bit of a nuisance to deal with the issue that some of the existing files might already be named with the a* pattern. Or would it be okay to rename the existing a* pattern files first (effectively "compacting" to fill in any holes in the numbering sequence) before the others, so that if we just happen to get a10 before a0002 in the dir() results, that when we go to rename a10 to a0002, that we do not have to worry about the possibility that a0002 might already exist ? Or would it be acceptable to leave all existing a???? files untouched and find the highest number used for them and rename the other ones only after that?

... All of this worry about clashes is not a problem if we can create a new directory to rename the files into.

[Luke Blades]

Currently they are named "a (1)" to "a (x)" for x number of files, as I just did a batch rename within the explorer window. However I get issues with ordering as Matlab likes to put "a (11)" before "a (2)" for example. So I just want to rename them all, and replace them in the same directory (or a new directory is fine too), with a0001 as the first name, with the number increasing. Thanks for your help,

[Walter Roberson]

ext = ".jpg";   %change to whatever is appropriate

for k = 1 : x
    src = compose("a (%d)" + ext, k);
    dst = compose("a%04d" + ext, k);
    if exist(src, 'file');
        movefile(src, dst);
    else
        fprintf('expected file "%s" not found\n', src);
    end
end

[Luke Blades]

Thank you very much!

[Walter Roberson]

Better would be

ext = ".jpg";   %change to whatever is appropriate

for k = 1 : x
    src = compose("a (%d)", k) + ext;
    dst = compose("a%04d", k) + ext;
    if exist(src, 'file');
        movefile(src, dst);
    else
        fprintf('expected file "%s" not found\n', src);
    end
end

...just on the remote chance that the file extension in ext happens to contain a % that compose() would try to act on...

[Malwandla Laurel]

How to rename the data file using matlab

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You have

   d = 'C:\Users\krraz\Desktop\Day13\*.txt';

which includes the *.txt . You do not change d in your code. Later you have

   movefile(d,newnames{j},'f');

but d still has the *.txt part, so it is going to move all the text files instead of moving one at a time.

   projectdir = 'C:\Users\krraz\Desktop\Day13';
   dinfo = dir( fullfile(projectdir, '*.txt') );
   oldnames = {dinfo.name};
   unwanted = cellfun(@isempty, regexp(oldnames, '^[A-Z][^_].*') );
   oldnames(unwanted) = [];
   newnames = regexprep(oldnames, '^(.)', '$1_');
   for K = 1 : length(oldnames)
      movefile( fullfile(projectdir, oldnames{K}), fullfile(projectdir, newnames{K}) );
   end

[Rama Afana]

hello,

I have a question about similiar subject

I have several files

LM.BARI..BHZ.D.2018.246.000000.txt
LM.BARI..BHZ.D.2018.247.000000.txt
LM.BARI..BHZ.D.2018.248.000000.txt
LM.TOGK..BHZ.D.2018.246.000000.txt
LM.TOGK..BHZ.D.2018.247.000000.txt
LM.TOGK..BHZ.D.2018.248.000000.txt

I would like to renama all those files as

BARI_Z_246.txt
BARI_Z_247.txt
BARI_Z_248.txt
TOGK_Z_246.txt
TOGK_Z_247.txt
TOGK_Z_248.txt

could you help me ?

thanks

[Walter Roberson]

   newnames = regexprep(oldnames, '^\w+\.(\w+)\.\...(\w)\.\w\.\d{4}\.(\d{3}).*$', '$1_$2_$3.txt');

[Josh Case]

Dose this code replace all of the code in the original question, or dose it replace just a section of it?

[Walter Roberson]

The code in https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/338822-rename-files-using-matlab#answer_265725 replaces all of the code in the original question.

[Josh Case]

How do I modify "regexprep(oldnames, '\w*', 'JOY_Y', 'once')" to only output "JOY_Y"? Currently it takes a file named "SigGen18_2022-05-26_07-45-21" and outputs "{'JOY_Y-05-26_07-45-21.mat'}"

[Walter Roberson]

Why? The output for that would be repmat({'JOY_Y'}, numel(oldnames), 1) except for fiddling for the case of empty entries.

Answer 2

[KSSV]

% Get all text files in the current folder
files = dir('*.txt');
% Loop through each file 
for id = 1:length(files)
    % Get the file name 
    [~, f,ext] = fileparts(files(id).name);
    rename = strcat(f,'_',ext) ; 
    movefile(files(id).name, rename); 
end

Run this code the folder which has your text files.

[Changoleon]

This code does NOT exactly do what I wanted. It adds _ to every file. I wanted to add _ after the first letter of the name of each file. But it helped, thank you KSSV!

Answer 3

[Solene Frileux]

Hello,

I Have a question about the same subject.

I have several files:

FoodS01HealthSession1.mat
FoodS01PracticeSession1.mat
FoodS01TasteSession1.mat
FoodS01TestSession1.mat

That go from S01 to S021 and I would like to all rename them as following

FoodSub110HealthSession1.mat
FoodSub110PracticeSession1.mat
FoodSub110TasteSession1.mat
FoodSub110TestSession1.mat

from 110 to 130

I cannot manage doing it using the function rename, as I donnnot know how to correctly code the loop nor using the function.

Could anyone help me?

Thanks a lot

[Walter Roberson]

Untested

   projectdir = '.';
   dinfo = dir( fullfile(projectdir, '*.txt') );
   oldnames = {dinfo.name};
   lookfor = 'FoodS0';
   wanted = strncmp(oldnames, lookfor, length(lookfor));
   oldnames(~wanted) = [];
   for K = 1 : length(oldnames)
      this_name = oldnames{K};
      old_info = regexp(this_name, '(?<prefix>\D+)(?<id>\d+)(?<suffix>.+)', 'names';
      old_id = str2double(old_info.id);
      new_name = [old_info.prefix 'ub' sprintf('%03d', old_id+109) old_info.suffix];
      movefile( fullfile(projectdir, this_name), fullfile(projectdir, new_name) );
   end

Answer 4

[Matteo]

Good morning everyone, I should import a series of PDF doc named 'abstract_included-1.pdf' (from 1 to 225) and then perform a linguistic analysis (tokenization and lemmatization) on each doc. I would like to do this through a loop, but I can't give the right input to make the loop go through all the documents. Could anyone help me?