Looking for a good bulk file rename program.

Filemanagers, partitioning tools, etc.
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MrAccident
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Looking for a good bulk file rename program.

#1 Post by MrAccident »

Looking for a program like "Bulk Rename Utility" for Windows.
With preview of the new file names.

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

Couldn't be easier. In ROX, highlight the files you want to rename, right-click on those files and choose Rename from the menu. You can see what the result will be before you click that last button and actually change the file names.

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MrAccident
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#3 Post by MrAccident »

PRename doesn't have any options other than just to replace some text; which at first try - didn't work well. But I finally see how to use gFnRename. It seems alright. Is there a way to make it the default renamer; or at least a way to get to the folder I was in, without searching it from root?

Anyway if someone knows of something a bit more advanced - please share.

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MochiMoppel
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#4 Post by MochiMoppel »

MrAccident wrote:Is there a way to make it the default renamer
No
or at least a way to get to the folder I was in, without searching it from root?
No
Anyway if someone knows of something a bit more advanced - please share.
Depends on what you are looking for. gFnRename is certainly a good basic program, but it's still a toy when compared with your reference program Bulk Rename Utility or with the renaming tool of Total Commander. It seems that all "good" renamers are Windows programs. It took me years to end the dependence on Total Commander and I now have powerful tools which do what I need, but I had to write them myself. And this could be exactly the reason why there are no powerful Linux programs: Almost any job can be done with a tailor-made script, and there are myriads of renaming scripts out there. Google is your friend. This may have reduced the need for a universal swiss-army-knife renamer. Bottom line: there is none :cry:

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Semme
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#5 Post by Semme »

>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

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MrAccident
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#6 Post by MrAccident »

That's a pretty long thread. Guess I'll never know.

MochiMoppel - thank you for sharing from your experience.
So far from testing - gFnRename seems fine. I used "Bulk Rename Utility" for the same that it can do. It was very convenient though. gFnRename is a bit annoying; mostly - to choose the files each time, and of course to find the folder; though I saw that there are bookmarks; could help. Anyway, I need it rarely.
Seems like you care about those kinds of things; so I'll exploit this opportunity to ask something I wanted to dedicate a thread to - a program like "Everything Search" for Windows.
This was the program with the most "how did I live without it?" moment.
The program was pretty lite, scanning of two huge full drives took just a few minutes, results showing "as you type", real time update of the database.
So far from Googling it - found some suggestions, usually about programs that are part of a big desktop suite. Is there something for Puppy?

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Flash
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#7 Post by Flash »

So you're looking for a little program that will scan an entire drive looking for files to rename?

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Semme
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#8 Post by Semme »

For me it's mlocate >> "This was the program with the most "how did I live without it?" moment."
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

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MrAccident
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#9 Post by MrAccident »

Flash - the file database program is a separate thing.

Semme - I installed the 0.24 version.
It finds files by name; but that seems to be it.
Here are the problems I have with it:
---it doesn't have file's: size, date. Also didn't see the option in the front-end for Xfce - Kupfer - to order by folder.
---it reverses the letter order in Hebrew. Don't know if it's because I use it in terminal.

So it's good to have for something you just can't find. But overall for someone who uses it REALLY often, like me - it's pretty lame.



Another thought I had - graphical disk usage utilities do pretty much the same thing. It would be great to combine the two.
I saw that in KDirStat you can see file names too. I can't install it cause I'm on Slacko. Don't know if on Lucid it's possible; I think I'll switch to it eventually anyway.
So is there a graphical disk usage utility where it's possible to also search the files in the database?

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Semme
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#10 Post by Semme »

That's right --different strokes. For YOU, perhaps this one.
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

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MrAccident
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#11 Post by MrAccident »

Bulldog took a rather long time to locate some deep files; and not possible to select more than one file; and hardly any file-manager options exist for the found files.

Thanks for that answers so far. More suggestions are welcomed.

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#12 Post by MochiMoppel »

MrAccident wrote:So it's good to have for something you just can't find. But overall for someone who uses it REALLY often, like me - it's pretty lame.
I get the impression that you are not looking for a genuine search program but rather for a convenient file launcher.

Search programs are made to look for things you can't find. Speed is important, but a secondary concern. IMO versatile search criteria and integration with the file manager are more important, and for that I wonder why you haven't considered Pfind that comes with Puppy. Unlike "Everything Search" it has the ability to search inside files and off course is fully integrated in Puppy.

"Everything Search" for Windows is an impressive little application: fast and portable. Only 1MB exe file and 1 ini file - that's the way I like it. It runs with some quirks under Wine and may be worth a consideration if you have Wine installed anyway. If you can coax it into opening ROX instead of Windows Explorer it even could be useful...
If you REALLY use it often you probably use it to quickly pull up files that you know where they exist - or your are REALLY messy :lol: . Have you considered alternatives such as bookmarking or shortcutting your files?

P.S. Just tested: In "Everything Search" the context menu can be configured and directed to a script. Right-click menu "Open path" now opens ROX and double-click opens the default Puppy application. Pretty cool... 8) .

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#13 Post by MrAccident »

WOW, great. I had problems with Wine. Maybe because my Puppy kinda broke down after an improper shutdown; probably because it's in full installation. I will try it in the future.

About why I need a really good search program - the short answer - "porn". OK seriously now... it's porn... no no...
I didn't understand your descriptions; like: "genuine search program" or "convenient file launcher".
The best way I can put it is - I'm always looking for a program that is the most effective and most efficient at what I need it for; which is usually pretty straight forward, as in what it suppose to do; but unfortunately people usually don't think in that way.
I'll give an example to how I could use it - I have maybe hundreds of thousands of images, many with code words I've given them. I need them for references for paintings. So if we are in this thread - I'll use that as an example. So I may need to find all the files with a certain code word(s), of which there may be 50 to 5000, lets say; and maybe I also want to change the code word, because there is a conflict with another code word, I didn't realize before; so I'll have to select and drag them to the rename application. Or sometimes I just quickly need to look at a needle, which can be beneath one of a thousand hay stacks. With Everything Search - it can be done in a matter of a few seconds; with PFind - hours.
I also have a lot of other files. I do have a lot of order, if you can say it like that; but for many things - there's no other way; and for many other things - it's tens of times more efficient.
Once you go Everything Search - you never go back. :-)

Can you drag and drop to some Puppy applications windows?
Can it make a data base on ext4?
How will I make these changes you've made - to be able to use ROX and default Puppy application?

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#14 Post by MochiMoppel »

OK, I can see now why the program is useful for you.

Next steps:
1) Try it out in Wine. This will answer all your Can it do this? and Can it do that? questions.
2) If you still find it worthwhile open another thread
3) Report what you found and what is working and what not. Only then should we discuss necessary customization.

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MrAccident
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#15 Post by MrAccident »

Alright. Thank you for all the help.

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