Comments on: Renaming numbered files in OSX incrementally

Question: Renaming numbered files in OSX incrementally

bcnarc — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:31:03 -0800

Renaming numbered files in OSX incrementally

I have several hundred files that are alll named with the following convention: ABC5000.jpg. I'm looking for a way in OS X to rename groups of these files by increasing the numerical portion of the file name by one, ie, ABC5000.jpg becomes ABC5001.jpg.

I know that automator has a 'make sequential' feature in the rename filies applet, but that seems to only offer the option to add numbers, not change the ones that are already appended.

Thanks for any suggestions. I'm willing to buy software if needed.

By: dance

dance — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:49:37 -0800

I' m pretty sure 'A better finder rename' can do this for you.

By: jozxyqk

jozxyqk — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:56:03 -0800

You can get Perl on OSX, right?
Here's a quick and dirty perl one-liner that should do it:
perl -e 'for (sort { $b ne $a } <ABC*.jpg>) { ($n) = /([^\.]+)/; $n++; rename $_,"$n.jpg"; }'

Just replace the "ABC*.jpg" part with some file wildcard that meets your needs (and replace the second .jpg if you have to also).

(You may want to test with some destroyable files first).

By: bcnarc

bcnarc — Thu, 24 May 2007 12:09:03 -0800

Corky Romano figured it out! The solution is to use automator's 'make sequential' feature and create new file names all together. After specifying the text prefix and a starting number the new sequential names will then have the corrected names.

Thanks for the other answers too.

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Thu, 24 May 2007 12:23:20 -0800

jozxyqk should get a checkmark. His or her solution is lovely and geeky and one-line long and right and in perl and makes me all happy inside.

By: macrone

macrone — Thu, 24 May 2007 15:31:09 -0800

jozxyqk's solution is nice, but doesn't

($n) = /([^\.]+)/; $n++; rename $_,"$n.jpg";

initially set $n to something like "ABC5000," which isn't an integer? Would incrementing a string just return 1? Even if it captured just the numeric part of the file name, the leading 'ABC' isn't included in the renamed file.

(Also, dots don't need to be escaped inside a character class; [^.] should work fine.)

Perhaps this is better?
($n) = /^ABC(\d+)/; $n++; rename $_,"ABC$n.jpg";

By: macrone

macrone — Thu, 24 May 2007 15:32:22 -0800

Aargh. Sorry for the entites in the rewritten code. Here it is again:

($n) = /^ABC(\d+)/; $n++; rename $_,"ABC$n.jpg";

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Thu, 24 May 2007 15:36:21 -0800

The freeware R-Name does this and many other file renaming tasks. You can preview the name changes before you commit. It's a vital tool in my toolbox.

By: aneel

aneel — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:49:01 -0800

macrone, perl's ++ is magic:

$ perl -e '$a = "ABC1234"; print ++$a . "\n"'

ABC1235

See here for more detail

By: Ajit AP

Ajit AP — Fri, 25 May 2007 06:48:07 -0800

Rename4Mac is what I use:
http://www.power4mac.com/renamer/