Easier way to perform complex rename operations (w/o regex)

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Lefteous
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Easier way to perform complex rename operations (w/o regex)

Post by *Lefteous »

There are quite a few threads here in the forum dealing with quite common regex operations used for renaming files.

What about collecting those cases and provide an easy way in MRT to perform these operations?

One example is changing the order of filename parts. In the case I would expect that the parts and the delimiter is detected automatically (based on first file) and the user can click on a button '[S#] Filename part'. This would insert the detected filename parts as [S1][S2][S3][S4] in the name field. Now the user can change this to e.g. [S1][S4][S3][S2].
Of course it must be communicated in a proper way which files won't be renamed as they don't have a common set of filename parts. The same problem also exists for performing the same operation using regex.

So the idea is to perform more complex rename operations without any regex knowledge. I think this is really something that mere mortals need and know how to use.
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Balderstrom
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Post by *Balderstrom »

EmEditor allows you to do "Batch" Search / Replaces, that can have any number of Search/Replaces, individual items can be enabled/disabled, and the series can be exported (saved) and imported.
Image: http://i.imgur.com/ChJdhsn.png

Multi-Commander allows you to input up to 5 search/replaces.

Automatic detection of delimiters would be fine, but TC should show what it "considers" the delim, and allow you to override it, or list multiple words that should be considered a delim.
\_\-
\__\foo
\___\foobar\barfoo

Separate the things that should be delimiters with an illegal file character, e.g. \


If TC allowed Batch replaces, mortals could do complex Renames as you don't need to define it all in a single Search/Replace Mask.

The limitation of a single Search/Replace is what makes writing the Regex|Glob|or TC's own syntax| much more difficult than it needs to be.
*BLINK* TC9 Added WM_COPYDATA and WM_USER queries for scripting.
sgp
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Re: Easier way to perform complex rename operations (w/o reg

Post by *sgp »

Lefteous wrote:One example is changing the order of filename parts. In the case I would expect that the parts and the delimiter is detected automatically (based on first file) and the user can click on a button '[S#] Filename part'. This would insert the detected filename parts as [S1][S2][S3][S4] in the name field. Now the user can change this to e.g. [S1][S4][S3][S2].
Automatic filename parts is a useful feature indeed, for instance, a user could swap Author/Title in a typical mp3 file collection, just detect where the first ' - ' is and swap [S1] with [S2]. Nice idea!
risk
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Post by *risk »

That would be very useful and a welcome addition to MRT. Additionally, how about listing the common ones in the TC wiki?
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