Subj : Re: Howto copy set of files with rename to shorter name?
To   : Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
From : Steve
Date : Sat Mar 09 2002 09:14 am

From: "E. S. (Steve) Fabian" <ESFabian@BellAtlantic.net>

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
>
> AB> I have a lot of files with name pattern: LONGNAME_XX-YY.ext, where
> AB> XX and YY are changing numbers and LONGNAME is string which is same
> AB> for all files. I need to copy them and change their names to
> AB> _shorter_ name while preserving the numbers: FOO-XX-YY.ext.
>
> Using 4NT (<URL:http://jpsoft.com./>) :
>
>   for %f in ( longname-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9].txt ) rename %f
F00-%@instr[9,5,%f].txt
>

In 4NT, 4DOS, and TakeCommand, even cleaner is:

for %f in ( longname-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9].txt ) rename %f 
F00-%@instr[0,-5,%@name[%f]].txt

where @INSTR selects the LAST 5 characters of the NAME portion of the file 
specification, regardless of the size of "longname".

You could also strip the underscore and hyphen from the name to make it 
shorter:

for %f in ( longname_[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9].txt ) (
  rename %f F00%@replace[-,,%@instr[0,-5,%@name[%f]]].txt )

Note that the parentheses act as a command continuation marker.
--
E. S. "Steve" Fabian               ESFabian@BellAtlantic.net
POB 1540, Cherry Hill, NJ 08034    Telephone: 856-354-1752
EMPIRE Consultants, Inc.           Director, Software Development
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