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Number   :  9153
Date     :  2004-11-07
Author   :  Garry Deane
Subject  :  Re: File rename revisited
Size(KB) :  2



--- In xxcopy@yahoogroups.com, "Jeremy Rector" =20
wrote:
>=20
> Hi John,
>=20
> Thanks for the tweaking. This one is a little closer. It seem
> that some of my files are using the ` symbol in the filename
> (damn users), and I need to use a different delimiter. Out of
> the chute it works, just a little oddly. I think a little
> more tweaking on my end should fix it for good. I just need
> to find a valid character that my users aren't using to use
> as a delimiter and it should do the trick. I have been working
> on the file extension problem, nice solution I overlooked the
> filename.ext issue earlier, thanks for spotting and fixing
> that. (very elegent)
> I may actually be developing a handle on this now. :)
>=20
> Thanks Again!

Xxcopy does allow you to specify an alternate separator
character using /s e.g. /s_. Unfortunately this isn't
going to help because:

1. Xxcopy only accepts a limited number of characters and
these are probably more commonly found than ` and you can't
use say ALT [170] =3D =AC or similar high bit characters which
wouldn't be found in the file names.

2. It seems that Xxcopy only uses ` when rebuilding the
directories with /srr e.g. using /srr/s_ doesn't work.

Short of abandoning xxcopy and using a pure batch approach,
the best I can think of is to rename the files in the source
which contain a ` with an alternate character such as =AC.
After the renaming with the date-time field is complete,
rename them back with the ` character. Here's an example
of how you can do the rename (assuming that it's only file
names that contain ` and not directories).

@echo off
setlocal
set src=3Dd:\test\src dir
for /f "tokens=3D*" %%a in ('dir /s/b "%src%\*`*"') do (
set fqname=3D%%a
set fname=3D%%nxa
call :replace`
)
goto :eof

:replace`
ren "%fqname%" "%fname:`=3D=AC%"
goto :eof

The character I've used above is ALT [170] because my editor
handles that character with grace but not some others. You
can use anything unique that's convenient.

Note however that renaming files in batch can be fraught with
problems because batch files treat fairly commonly used
characters such as % ^ ! " ( ) as special batch characters.
If your files containing ` also contain these batch characters,
you might run into problems. I haven't tested all these but I
know that % in particular is next to impossible to deal with.

If this proves too difficult, there are freely available
file renamers that can probably do the job.

Garry



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