XP Utility for Batch File Management (File Moves, or Multiple Copies)?

September 29, 2004 6:48 AM

I know there are batch renaming utilities, but I'm looking for a more general batch-file management tool. I'm in the middle of a big job that involves all sorts of renaming and rearranging of file / folder structures. For instance, I have a hundred folders, each of which contains a subfolder called Images. Within Images, there are three jpegs. I need to delete the Images folders but not the jpegs. The jpegs need to be moved up-one-level into the main folders. Another task involved copying a single html file into all 100 folders. This is all using WinXP.
posted by grumblebee to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You might want to invest some time and learn a scripting language...these general purpose file system mucking about are the kinds of tasks they excel at.

XP has (or should have, it's been a while) vbScript/Windows Scripting Host built in. There are also single click installations of perl and php out there for windows.
posted by alana at 6:54 AM on September 29, 2004

Power Renamer XP
posted by internal at 7:51 AM on September 29, 2004

cygwin + bash scripting is the pay now/profit later solution. but you won't pay that much, or become that rich.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:16 AM on September 29, 2004

I agree with Andrew. I think this work for the example you mentioned, and it would likely work without modification under cygwin:

find -name images -type d -exec sh -c 'mv {}/* {}/.. ; rmdir {}' \;
posted by mragreeable at 11:22 AM on September 29, 2004

matlab could probably do all that if you happen to have that and know it well
posted by jacobsee at 5:00 PM on September 29, 2004

I bet you could write a killer Half-Life mod to do it as well.
posted by mragreeable at 8:38 PM on September 29, 2004