Copyright
Christian Engström, 2005
This
work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
Renames one or more files, or moves them to another directory on the
same device.
> rena ***\*.html \backup\***\*.htm -before=yesterday
Renamed to: e:\backup\about.htm
Renamed to: e:\backup\index.htm
Created dir: e:\backup\doc\
Renamed to: e:\backup\doc\00readme.htm
Created dir: e:\backup\doc\old
Renamed to: e:\backup\doc\old\index.htm
19 kb renamed, 4 files
rena accepts the same wildcards
and file selection options
as the d directory command.
The rena command supports version numbers. If an output file already exists, it is not overwritten. Instead the existing file is renamed with a version number, before the input file is renamed to the name without a version number.
> rena a.xyz b.xyz
The first parameter is an input file specification. rena accepts the same wildcards as the d directory command. See File Specifications.
Unlike the d directory command,
rena does not add any defaults to the input file
specification, so you must specify all wildcards explicitly.
This
makes rena a bit less generous than the d directory command, just like the cop (copy) command. This stinginess is
intentional.
| *.*.* | All versions of all files in the directory. |
| *.* *.*. |
The highest version of all files in the
directory,
but not the previous versions.
Both variants have the same meaning. The first one is
shortest. |
| * *. |
The highest version of all files in the directory that have
an empty extension. Note that this is different from how a Unix shell would
interpret a single asterisk. It is also different from the meaning it
has in the d directory command, where wildcards for extension
and version number are added automatically. |
| *..* *.~*~ |
All versions of all files in the directory that
have
an empty extension.
If you use the syntax with only one dot, the tildes are required, or the last asterisk will be interpreted as "all extensions" rather than "all versions". |
If you want to give a list of input files, they must be enclosed in parentheses (to separate them from the second parameter, which is the output file specification). The parentheses must be prefixed with the backslash escape character under Linux.
> rena (*.html x.css *.gif) publish\
> rena \('*.html' 'x.css' '*.gif'\) publish/
> rena a.xyz b.xyz
The second parameter is an output file specification, which is
described on the page Output File
Specifications.
The rest of the description here deals with specifics for the rena command.
If you want to move files to the current working directory, you have to specify it explicitly with a dot.
> rena '/somewhere/else/*.html' .moves the files to the current directory.
If you want to move files to another directory without changing their names, you can omit the name and extension wildcards in the output file specification.
> rena '*.html' 'publish/'
Suppose we have the following files in a directory:
Directory of e:\work\
2 kb 12-Jan-2005 14:58:55 myfile.txt.~1~
2 kb 14-Jan-2005 02:17:30 myfile.txt.~2~
----------
4 kb total, 2 files
The most current version of the file is the one with version number .~2~
. Normally the most current version does not have any version number as
part of the disk filename, but here it does. This situation occurs when
we delete the last version of a file, in order to revert to the
previous one.
If we give the command
> rena myfile.txt
(without any output file specification), rena will normalize
the filename of the last version.
The result will be:
Directory of e:\work\
2 kb 12-Jan-2005 14:58:55 myfile.txt.~1~
2 kb 14-Jan-2005 02:17:30 myfile.txt
----------
4 kb total, 2 files
This very useful functionality follows automatically from the syntax and defaults of the rena command. If we type
> rena '*.*'
this is the same as
> rena '*.*' '*.*'
after the default wildcards have been added to the (empty) output
file specification.
The meaning of this is to take the most current version of all files
(whether they have an explicit version number or not), and rename them
to the same name in the same directory, using the version number
mechanism.
For the files where the current version does not have an explicit version number (which is the normal case), the rename operation is a no-op, and is not carried out. But when the most current version does have a version number, the version number mechanism will ensure that it is renamed so that the version number is removed.
Directories can be renamed just like any other files. This has the
effect of "moving" all files and subdirectories in the entire directory
tree.
> rena mydir old
renames the directory mydir to old. All the
files that were previously located somewhere in mydir\***\
can now instead be found in old\***\.
Do not use the *** wildcard in the command line
when renaming directory trees, as you would with the cop command. This is an important
difference between the two commands. Renaming the top directory
implicitly renames the entire directory tree, while copying the top
directory only creates an empty directory.
If you try to rename a directory tree using the ***
syntax that is appropriate for the cop command, the end result
will be correct (because the rename operation starts at the top), but
you'll get a lot of spurious error messages saying "no such file".
> rena ***\*.*.* junk\ -exclude=(.doc .txt) -before=today -min_size=2mb -hidden=also
> rena '***/*.*.*' junk/ -exclude=\(.doc .txt\) -before=today -min_size=2mb -hidden=also
| -since [= datetime] | Select files that were created on or after a certain date/time. |
| -before [= datetime] | Select file that were created before a certain date/time. |
| -min_size [= size] | Specify a minimum file size in bytes, Mb, or some other unit |
| -max_size [= size] | Specify a maximum file size . |
|
-directories
[= only/also/not]
|
List directory files (only/also/not) . Default is also. |
| -hidden [= only/also/not] | List hidden files (only/also/not). Default is not. |
| -nodefault | Do not add any default wildcards or other filename parts to
the filename. For the rena command, option is used to suppress wildcards in the output file specification. (The input file specifications has no default wildcards to suppress.) |
| -exclude [= filespec] | Exclude files that match the file specification given as option value. If the option value is enclosed in parenthesis, it can contain a full file specification, including recursive file selection options. |
These options control which files are selected. See File
Selection Options.
> rena *.* -lower -portable
> rena '*.*' -lower -portableChanges all filenames in the directory to lower case, and converts characters that are likely to cause problems on some platforms.
| -safe |
|
| -portable | Performs the same cleanup operations as -safe, and
additionally:
|
| -lower -upper -title |
Converts the filenames to lower, UPPER, or Title Case. |
| -nospace | Maps all spaces to underscore. |
| -nodash | Maps all dashes (hyphens) to underscore. |
> rena '*.log' '*.oldlog' -nowarning
| Print out a brief help text with a summary of each of the different options, and exit from the program. | |
| -version | Show the name and version number of the program, and exit.
This option must be written out in full, and cannot be abbreviated. |
| -verbose
-v -statistics -noverbose |
Specify the amount of informational messages. |
| -warning -nowarning -noerror |
Specify the level of error reporting. |
See Help and Information Options.
Copyright
Christian Engström, 2005
This
work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.