Virtual Geek

I recently received a task to rename a bunch of files by changing their numbering in the filename while working on a PowerShell DevOps project. I had multiple Markdown files with numbers at the start of their names, and I needed to change these numbers with the filename based on a mentioned in CSV file. Here’s how I solved it with a simple PowerShell script.

In my project folder, I had file names exampled like  01-file.md, 02-doc.md, 03-notes.md, and so on. The task was to rename them by swapping their number prefixes according to a CSV file. For example, change 01-... to 05-..., 02-... to 01-..., and so forth. Manually doing task was very hectic and time consuming.

$fileExtension = "*.md"
$numbering = Import-Csv -Path "$PSScriptRoot\re-numbering.csv"
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path "$PSScriptRoot\files" -File -Recurse -Include $fileExtension  #-Exclude '*.csv','*.zip','*.ps1'
$files

foreach ($file in $files)
{
    $extractedOldNumber = $file.Name.Substring(0,2)
    #[regex]::Match($file.Name, '^\d+') # Regex example to extract leading number
    $newNumber = $numbering | Where-Object {[int]$($_.OldNumber.Trim()) -eq [int]$extractedOldNumber.Trim()} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty NewNumber
    #$oldName = $file.Name
    $newName = $file.name -replace '^\d{1,2}', $newNumber
    #oldName
    #newName
  $file | Rename-Item -NewName $newName
}

Write-Host "Renaming Completed!"

Get-ChildItem -Path "$PSScriptRoot\files" -File -Recurse -Include $fileExtension  #-Exclude '*.csv','*.zip','*.ps1'

Download this script rename-file.ps1.zip here or it is also available on github.com.

To solve the task I created a CSV file named re-numbering.csv with two columns: OldNumber and NewNumber. as per below example table:

This table tells the script which old number to replace with which new number. And Below is the output screenshot.

This script saved me a lot of time. Instead of manually renaming each file, I just updated the CSV table and let PowerShell handle the task. It’s a simple, reusable solution for anyone needing to batch-rename files based on a numbering pattern. In case if you have numbers in between the text you can use regex to find the number and replace it.

[regex]::Replace($file.Name, '\d*')

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