Data Migration - Bulk Renaming

[Dendox 102]

We are readying to move our files to the cloud and are concerned about an issue that I am hoping the braintrust can help us with.

 

All of our equipment is Mac - including our in office server.  Mac allows naming conventions that windows will not.  one of our paralegal has saved files with back slashes for YEARS, along with other special characters.  

 

Is there an app/program/whatthefuckever that will locate replace these special characters like find-replace in word?

 

Moving 4-5 TB of data to the cloud is going to be a beating if it keeps stalling when bad file names are thrown at it.  

[Nice Guy Eddie 13707]

I believe that Mac has a built-in tool to rename files but it may turn everything into a generic name followed by a number. I assume there are more robust tools available. 

[blacklab 12049]

https://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/

 

 

[Dahobbs 18192]

In windows, I use excel to make a rename formula, apply to my files, and then run in a batch process or copy and paste into command line. I don't know macs at all, but I'd have to think something similar could be done. Or, just go with blacklab's suggestion. 

[Dendox 102]

BL's suggestion looks perfect given it has this in the freaking page.  Let me see if I can figure it out as I am far from a power user.

 

Thanks to all who have responded.

 

Quote

Power Users

AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE, AS COMPLEX AS NECESSARY.

 

System administrators, web masters and other power users will appreciate the presence of advanced features, such as regular expression support, conversion to Windows NTFS/SMB compatible names, the ability to import file names from a database, a spreadsheet or any other source that can produce plain or tab-delimited text files. Finally, it allows you to save a record of the current and new file names to facilitate tracking your files.

 

[CooterBrown 18272]

I think I have a batch file I wrote a few years ago on my desktop at work that does this. I’ll look tomorrow and if it’s there, I’ll post it.

[TwiceHorn 31987]

Given that OSX/MacOS is unix-based, there's probably some batch files out there doing whatever you want.

Nonetheless, I think Finder will replace characters in file names pretty easily. http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/28/batch-rename-files-mac-os-x-finder/

Also this. https://manytricks.com/namemangler/

Edited October 21, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Bevo 13825]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Given that OSX/MacOS is unix-based, there's probably some batch files out there doing whatever you want.

Nonetheless, I think Finder will replace characters in file names pretty easily. http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/28/batch-rename-files-mac-os-x-finder/

Also this. https://manytricks.com/namemangler/

If it is unix-based, I know who you need:

 

 

[The University 852]

On 10/21/2019 at 2:29 PM, Dendox said:

Is there an app/program/whatthefuckever that will locate replace these special characters like find-replace in word?

depending upon your parameters, sed/awk/grep with a regular expression (or two) should do it. i wouldn't be surprised if someone has posted a script or one-liner to do this on stack exchange.

always use 'echo' to test your mv/cp/etc commands in your script. e.g., 'echo mv blah blah.xxx blah.xxx'