Develop Reference

remove characters from every file name in directory with python

So I am writing a piece of code that needs to iterate through hundreds of files in a directory. With every filt it needs to filter out certain pieces of information in it then put it in a new file with a modified name.
For example, a file called 1100006_0.vcf or 5100164_12.vcf must have a file created called 1100006.vcf and 5100164.vcf respectively. Can you point me in the right direction for this?

EDIT: To make code Generic and rename file names from one directory to any other directory/folder try following. I have kept this program inside /tmp and renamed the files inside /tmp/test and it worked fine(in a Linux system).
#!/usr/bin/python3
import os
DIRNAME="/tmp/test"
files = os.listdir(DIRNAME)
for f in files:
if '.vcf' in f:
newname = f.split('_')[0]
newname = newname + '.vcf'
os.rename(os.path.join(DIRNAME,f), os.path.join(DIRNAME,newname))
Since you want to rename the files, so we could use os here. Written and tested with shown samples in python3, I have given DIRNAME as /tmp you could give your directory where you want to look for files.
#!/usr/bin/python3
import os
DIRNAME="/tmp"
files = os.listdir(DIRNAME)
for f in files:
if '.vcf' in f:
newname = f.split('_')[0]
newname = newname + '.vcf'
os.rename(f, newname)

As posted by RavinderSingh13, the code was fine, the only issue was that in renaming them, I would have two files of the same name (the difference between them was the underscore and number that I needed removed).
#!/usr/bin/python3
import os
DIRNAME="/tmp"
files = os.listdir(DIRNAME)
for f in files:
if '.vcf' in f:
newname = f.split('_')[0]
newname = newname + '.vcf'
os.rename(f, newname)

Keeping renamed text files in original folder

This is my current (from a Jupyter notebook) code for renaming some text files.
The issue is when I run the code, the renamed files are placed in my current working Jupyter folder. I would like the files to stay in the original folder
import glob
import os
path = 'C:\data_research\text_test\*.txt'
files = glob.glob(r'C:\data_research\text_test\*.txt')
for file in files:
os.rename(file, file[-27:])

You should only change the name and keep the path the same. Your filename will not always be longer than 27 so putting this into you code is not ideal. What you want is something that just separates the name from the path, no matter the name, no matter the path. Something like:
import os
import glob
path = 'C:\data_research\text_test\*.txt'
files = glob.glob(r'C:\data_research\text_test\*.txt')
for file in files:
old_name = os.path.basename(file) # now this is just the name of your file
# now you can do something with the name... here i'll just add new_ to it.
new_name = 'new_' + old_name # or do something else with it
new_file = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(file), new_name) # now we put the path and the name together again
os.rename(file, new_file) # and now we rename.
If you are using windows you might want to use the ntpath package instead.

file[-27:] takes the last 27 characters of the filename so unless all of your filenames are 27 characters long, it will fail. If it does succeed, you've stripped off the target directory name so the file is moved to your current directory. os.path has utilities to manage file names and you should use them:
import glob
import os
path = 'C:\data_research\text_test*.txt'
files = glob.glob(r'C:\data_research\text_test*.txt')
for file in files:
dirname, basename = os.path.split(file)
# I don't know how you want to rename so I made something up
newname = basename + '.bak'
os.rename(file, os.path.join(dirname, newname))

How to rename the file extension, by removing archive dates

I am thinking this code should take all my files within the folder, and rename .pdf_(date) to .pdf. However, it is not.
import os,sys
folder = 'C:\/MattCole\/test'
for filename in os.listdir(folder):
infilename = os.path.join(folder,filename)
if not os.path.isfile(infilename): continue
oldbase = os.path.splitext(filename)
newname = infilename.replace('.pdf*', '.pdf')
output = os.rename(infilename, newname)
Example: file1.pdf_20160614-050421 renamed to file.pdf
There would be multiple files in the directory. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have also tried counting the extension and used '.pdf????????????', '.pdf'

This is a bit silly, you've got some perfectly good code here that you're not using. You should use it.
import os,sys
folder = 'C:\/MattCole\/test'
for filename in os.listdir(folder):
infilename = os.path.join(folder,filename)
if os.path.isfile(infilename):
oldbase, oldext = os.path.splitext(infilename)
if oldext.startswith('.pdf'):
output = os.rename(infilename, oldbase+'.pdf')

You want to split the old file name on _, then take the first part as new name:
>>> old_name = 'file1.pdf_20160614-050421'
>>> new_name = old_name.split('_')[0]
>>> new_name
'file1.pdf'

Renaming multiple files in a directory using Python

I'm trying to rename multiple files in a directory using this Python script:
import os
path = '/Users/myName/Desktop/directory'
files = os.listdir(path)
i = 1
for file in files:
os.rename(file, str(i)+'.jpg')
i = i+1
When I run this script, I get the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "rename.py", line 7, in <module>
os.rename(file, str(i)+'.jpg')
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Why is that? How can I solve this issue?
Thanks.

You are not giving the whole path while renaming, do it like this:
import os
path = '/Users/myName/Desktop/directory'
files = os.listdir(path)
for index, file in enumerate(files):
os.rename(os.path.join(path, file), os.path.join(path, ''.join([str(index), '.jpg'])))
Edit: Thanks to tavo, The first solution would move the file to the current directory, fixed that.

You have to make this path as a current working directory first.
simple enough.
rest of the code has no errors.
to make it current working directory:
os.chdir(path)

import os
from os import path
import shutil
Source_Path = 'E:\Binayak\deep_learning\Datasets\Class_2'
Destination = 'E:\Binayak\deep_learning\Datasets\Class_2_Dest'
#dst_folder = os.mkdir(Destination)
def main():
for count, filename in enumerate(os.listdir(Source_Path)):
dst = "Class_2_" + str(count) + ".jpg"
# rename all the files
os.rename(os.path.join(Source_Path, filename), os.path.join(Destination, dst))
# Driver Code
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

As per #daniel's comment, os.listdir() returns just the filenames and not the full path of the file. Use os.path.join(path, file) to get the full path and rename that.
import os
path = 'C:\\Users\\Admin\\Desktop\\Jayesh'
files = os.listdir(path)
for file in files:
os.rename(os.path.join(path, file), os.path.join(path, 'xyz_' + file + '.csv'))

Just playing with the accepted answer define the path variable and list:
path = "/Your/path/to/folder/"
files = os.listdir(path)
and then loop over that list:
for index, file in enumerate(files):
#print (file)
os.rename(path+file, path +'file_' + str(index)+ '.jpg')
or loop over same way with one line as python list comprehension :
[os.rename(path+file, path +'jog_' + str(index)+ '.jpg') for index, file in enumerate(files)]
I think the first is more readable, in the second the first part of the loop is just the second part of the list comprehension

If your files are renaming in random manner then you have to sort the files in the directory first. The given code first sort then rename the files.
import os
import re
path = 'target_folder_directory'
files = os.listdir(path)
files.sort(key=lambda var:[int(x) if x.isdigit() else x for x in re.findall(r'[^0-9]|[0-9]+', var)])
for i, file in enumerate(files):
os.rename(path + file, path + "{}".format(i)+".jpg")

I wrote a quick and flexible script for renaming files, if you want a working solution without reinventing the wheel.
It renames files in the current directory by passing replacement functions.
Each function specifies a change you want done to all the matching file names. The code will determine the changes that will be done, and displays the differences it would generate using colors, and asks for confirmation to perform the changes.
You can find the source code here, and place it in the folder of which you want to rename files https://gist.github.com/aljgom/81e8e4ca9584b481523271b8725448b8
It works in pycharm, I haven't tested it in other consoles
The interaction will look something like this, after defining a few replacement functions
when it's running the first one, it would show all the differences from the files matching in the directory, and you can confirm to make the replacements or no, like this

This works for me and by increasing the index by 1 we can number the dataset.
import os
path = '/Users/myName/Desktop/directory'
files = os.listdir(path)
index=1
for index, file in enumerate(files):
os.rename(os.path.join(path, file),os.path.join(path,''.join([str(index),'.jpg'])))
index = index+1
But if your current image name start with a number this will not work.

Python 3x - Remove numbers from file names

import os
def rename_files():
# (1) get file names from a folder
file_list = os.listdir(r"C:\Users\USEER\Desktop\Udacity\Udacity - Programming Foundation with Python\Project\prank\prank")
# print(file_list)
saved_path = os.getcwd()
print("Current Working Directory is " + saved_path)
os.chdir(r"C:\Users\USEER\Desktop\Udacity\Udacity - Programming Foundation with Python\Project\prank\prank")
# (2) for each file, rename file name
for file_name in file_list:
print("Old Name - " + file_name)
print("New Name - " + file_name.translate("0123456789"))
os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate("0123456789"))
os.chdir(saved_path)
rename_files()
The code above doesn't rename the file by removing the integers. Can anyone help? (Python 3x)

import re
new_name = re.sub('[0-9]', '', file_name)

In Python 3 the String.translate is gone. Therefore you need to use the str.translate. It needs 'str.maketrans' which normally creates a translation table with the first two arguments supplied(not needed in this example), the third argument supplies the characters to be stripped.
This line should have the desired effect ...
os.rename(file_name, file_name.translate(str.maketrans('','','0123456789'))
Previous suggestions used .strip() however in this case as the numbers are mixed in with the filenames (not before or after) I believe it would not work, another used Regular Expressions which is perfectly valid, however within the context of this particular Udacity course translate was the suggested solution.
Here are the docs for maketrans :
[https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.maketrans][1]

The problem is in your translate function that doesn't do anything. There are better options available, but if your want to use translate then the proper syntax is:
#!/usr/bin/env python2
import string
new_name = string.translate(file_name, None, "0123456789")

Here is one way of renaming files.
Use os.renames to rename the files
Use file_name.strip("0123456789") to remove numbers
Code is given below:
import os
def file_rename():
name_list=os.listdir(r"C:\python\prank")
print(name_list)
saved_path=os.getcwd()
print("Current working directory is"+saved_path)
os.chdir(r"C:\python\prank")
for file_name in name_list:
print("old name"+file_name)
print("new name"+file_name.strip("0123456789"))
os.renames(file_name,file_name.strip("0123456789"))
os.chdir(saved_path)
file_rename()
To read more about os.renames check here.
To read more about the strip function, check here.

Another way to do this without import re. Instead of utilizing the .translate, use the .strip.
os.rename(file_name, file_name.strip('0123456789'))
Another observation is that your code wont read the new file name after changing it. At the top of your code you are reading file names and saving those name in file_list
# (1) get file names from a folder
file_list = os.listdir(r"C:\Users\USEER\Desktop\Udacity\Udacity - Programming Foundation with Python\Project\prank\prank")
In the for loop, where you are changing the name of each file, YOU ARE NOT reading the new file's name. You need to do something like this.
# (2) for each file, rename file name
for file_name in file_list:
print("Old Name - " + file_name)
os.rename(file_name, file_name.strip("0123456789"))
# (3) read file's name again... 'file_list' has old names
new_file_list = os.listdir(r"C:\Users\USEER\Desktop\Udacity\Udacity - Programming Foundation with Python\Project\prank\prank")
for file_name in new_file_list:
print("New file's name: " + new_file_name)
os.chdir(saved_path)

import os
def rename_files():
#1 Get file names from the folder
file = os.listdir(r"C:\Web\Python\prank")
print(file)
saved_path = os.getcwd()
print("Current Working Directory is"+saved_path)
os.chdir(r"C:\Web\Python\prank")
#2 For each file name rename file names
for file_name in file:
print("Old Name - " + file_name)
os.rename(file_name,file_name.strip("0123456789"))
print("New Name - " + file_name)
os.chdir(saved_path)
rename_files()

enter code here
import os
dir="/home/lucidvis/myPythonHome/prank/"
def rename_files():
# get file names from a folder
filenames = os.listdir(dir)
# print(filenames)
for file in filenames:
#print(file)
try:
#with os.open(filename for filename in filenames,"r+"):
#read_file = filename.read()
# new_name = file.translate(str.maketrans('','', "0123456789"))
new_filname = (file.translate(str.maketrans('','', "0123456789"))).replace(" ","")
#print(dir+new_file_name)
os.rename(dir+file,dir+new_file_name)
except SyntaxError as e:
print(e)
continue
# for each file, rename filename
rename_files()
import os
dir="/home/lucidvis/myPythonHome/prank/"
def rename_files():
# get file names from a folder
filenames = os.listdir(dir)
# iterate through the list of filenames
for file in filenames:
#print(file)
try:
#assign a variable to new names for easy manipulation
new_filname = (file.translate(str.maketrans('','', "0123456789"))).replace(" ","")
#concatenating the directory name to old and new file names
os.rename(dir+file,dir+new_file_name)
#just to manage errors
except SyntaxError as e:
print(e)
continue
#file renaming function call
rename_files()

will guys i was trying to solve this problem because i see udacity online courses and it require to rename file without numbers thanks to simon for his replay i have to figured it out
this is my code to rename files without numbers, hope it jhelp anyone who stuck
import os
import re
def rename():
#get the list of the photo name
plist = os.listdir(r"D:\pay\prank")
print(plist)
#removing the numbers from the photo names
os.chdir(r"D:\pay\prank")
for pname in plist :
os.rename(pname, re.sub('[0-9]', '' , pname))
print(pname)
rename()

import os
import re
from string import digits
#Get file names
file_list = os.listdir(r"C:\Users\703305981\Downloads\prank\prank")
print(file_list)
#chenage directory.
os.chdir(r"C:\Users\703305981\Downloads\prank\prank")
print (os.getcwd())
#Change the Name.
for file_name in file_list:
os.rename(file_name, re.sub(r'[0-9]+', '', file_name))