Renamer

At least once a month I find myself in a situation where I have to rename a group of files, but there are too many to do by hand and too few to be worth the effort of writing a script to handle it.

Renamer makes complex file-renaming tasks simple by generating a renaming script from a series of simple but powerful transformations - with a live preview to help you visualize the changes you’ll be making.

How It Works

There are three sections to the app - Comparisons, Transformations, and Shell Output.

Comparison items allow you to input text to see how it will be output when the transformations are applied. Add as many comparisons as you need to ensure all your edge cases are covered.

Transformation items each have an associated “verb” - e.g. “replace”, “insert before”, “remove all” - and at least one input field. For instance, if you have the string “Smith_Project_042020_final.pdf” but you want to transform it into “Smith_Final.pdf”, you would add a “remove” transformation with the input “_Project_042020” and a “replace” transformation with “final” and “Final”.

The Shell Output section generates valid script code in BASH and PowerShell which you can copy/paste to execute on the command line.

Tech Stack

• React for the UI
• Flux-like state management (without a library)
• Bash transformations using awk
• PowerShell using built-in cmdlets