Powershell & Regex - How to find and delete uppercase characters from file names in directory

Question

I need a Powershell script that will find and replace uppercase characters within all the filenames within a directory with nothing.

The script would do something like this:

Filename BEFORE: CAPITAL-letters.jpg

Filename AFTER: -letters.jpg

Edit: I tried running this script, but it didn't work

dir | rename-item -NewName {$_.name -replace [Regex]::Escape("[A-Z"),""}

Can you post what you've tried? Please note that this isn't a script request forum. — Pedro von Hertwig Batista, Jun 07 '17 at 21:04
`gci c:\directory\ | mv -dest { $_.Name -replace '(?-i)[A-Z]' } -WhatIf` — TessellatingHeckler, Jun 07 '17 at 21:06
Darnit, @ConnorLSW, I was only just tripping over regex case sensitivity in another comment, just guessed about `(?-i)` to turn off insensitivity and was feeling pleased that it works, and I forgot the `-cthing` and `-ithing` variants; yes that's nicer. — TessellatingHeckler, Jun 07 '17 at 21:09
@TessellatingHeckler yeah it's strange to use case insensitive Regex, confused me for a while too. — colsw, Jun 07 '17 at 21:11

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 07 '17 at 21:09

2

$test = "CAPITAL-letters.jpg"
$test -creplace "[A-Z]"

=> -letters.jpg

answered Jun 07 '17 at 21:09

Manu

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whats t e h deal with "-creplace"? :D – Jaqueline Vanek Jun 08 '17 at 04:08
It means it's case sensitive so in this case we replace ONLY capital letters – Manu Jun 08 '17 at 06:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 07 '17 at 22:35

1

since this got answers, for full clarity:

Remove -WhatIf when you're running it.

Get-ChildItem | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -creplace "[A-Z]"} -WhatIf

This pipes Get-ChildItem into Rename-Item and then Sets the NewName to be the old name, except we've case-sensitively replaced any capital letters with nothing.

answered Jun 07 '17 at 22:35

colsw

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What if I want to run this script with an entire directory? – abednabir Jun 08 '17 at 12:45
@abednabir i'm sure you've figure dit out already - but running this will perform the action on the entire current folder, you can add `-Recurse` to the `Get-ChildItem` command to have it include subfolders. – colsw Jun 08 '17 at 14:20
My apologies - I was in a bit of a hurry when I left that comment. The script does work for file directories. – abednabir Jun 09 '17 at 13:52

Powershell & Regex - How to find and delete uppercase characters from file names in directory

2 Answers2