Page 1 of 1

Any way to use Wildcard in MutiRename "Search & Replace"?

Posted: 08.02.2010, 05:22
by granny
I feel really stupid right now.

How do I use wildcards "*" and "?" in the MultiRename Search For box?

I have filenames that I want to change one single character in the middle of the name, and I haven't been able to figure out how to make this work. The rename window just closes without actually changing the name (no filenames marked in red for "unable to rename")


Help??

Re: Any way to use Wildcard in MutiRename "Search & Replace"?

Posted: 08.02.2010, 09:11
by Karol
You have:
dcw-abc201002.txt
dcw-abc201003.txt

You want to change to:
dcw-abx201002.txt
dcw-abx201003.txt

Search for: abc
Replace with: abx

Re: Any way to use Wildcard in MutiRename "Search & Replace"?

Posted: 09.02.2010, 04:15
by granny
Karol, Thank you, that does work.

I have this situation ---
I saved a lot of forum pages to my hard drive as mht and htm files. The boards that use phpBB software have changed their Post Titles to include a dot symbol where there used to be a dash.
like this:
FreeCommander Forum View topic - Wildcard symbols in quick search.mht

(now that I know this, I will fix the title before I save the page :D )

Meanwhile, I have dozens of such files, and want to shorten the names for better visibility in file list , such as "FCF - Wildcard symbols in quick search.mht"
It works to do a simple copy and paste into the "Search For" field, but it won't let me save a Profile with that symbol.

The only solution I have come up with is to do it in two passes, the first to delete the first (x) number of characters including the dot, then second pass to search and replace "view topic - " with "FCF - "

Any ideas on how to do this kind of thing more efficiently?

also, is there any way to replace a single character at a specified location, no matter what the character is? For example, if I want to replace the 7th character in every file name, but that character is different in every name.
such as
51000-T summary.xls
51001-R summary.xls
51002-P summary.xls

in all of these, wanting to change the seventh character to "F".
Is there a way?

Re: Any way to use Wildcard in MutiRename "Search & Replace"?

Posted: 09.02.2010, 05:55
by W4tch3r
For that particular example, this will work:

[n6]F[n,8]

It picks out the first 6 chars, pokes in the "F" and then picks out the rest from char 8 onwards.

51001-R summary.xls --> 51001-F summary.xls

W4tch3r

Re: Any way to use Wildcard in MutiRename "Search & Replace"?

Posted: 09.02.2010, 06:11
by granny
Great!
Thank you, W4tch3r.

I can see I'm going to have to get more flexible in my thinking, and experiment with patterns.
My mind doesn't bend in that direction, I'm only used to setting up named variables in a script (visual basic and AviSynth, which is based on Python). And you know, when you get old, your brain gets arthritic and stubborn.