RegName

RegName is a regular expression based tool to perform complex file rename operations. It shows a list of files in a folder matching a selectable pattern. It then allows you to rename those files to another pattern, including preview.

RegName has many handy uses: renaming image files, log files, music files, etc.

Once installed, RegName shows up on the start menu. When started from there, it will display the contents of your My Documents folder. You can then browse to the folder of your choice. However, it is much quicker to just right-click on a folder and select Rename files using RegName...:

The RegName folder context menu

RegName will then start up in the folder you selected:

RegName Main Screen

RegName is very simple to use:

1. Enter a match pattern that specifies which files you would like to rename. Use angle brackets (< and >) to split up the file names into named parts. The default pattern is <name>.<ext>, which matches all files with an period in their name. The part before the period is called 'name', the part after it 'ext'.
2. Then enter a replace pattern. Here, you can re-use the parts defined in the match pattern, so if you would enter <name>, the file extension would be removed; if you entered <name>.<ext>.<ext>, the extension would be duplicated. The possibilities are endless.
3. Click Preview to show only the files matching your match pattern, and to display their new name on the right. If a file would does not change its name using the supplied patterns, it remains unselected. All other files will have a checkmark in front of them
4. When you're satisfied with the results, click Rename! to perform the rename operation on all selected files.
5. If you want to restore the standard match and replace patterns, click Default.
6. To start a new rename operation in another folder, click the ...-button at the top right.

For some more complex operations, that is not quite enough. Suppose we wanted to rename files called 'ex080224.log' into '24-02-2008.log'? Then the real power of RegName kicks in: the parts a file name are made up of can be specfied as real regular expressions. Simply add the expression after the name of the part in the match pattern, with a colon in between. In this case we would enter:

ex<y:\d\d><m:\d\d><d:\d\d>.log

That means: first the letters e and x, then two digits (the combination \d stands for a digit) in a part called 'y' (for 'year'), two digits in a part called 'm', and another two digits in a part called 'd'.

The replace pattern would be:

<d>-<m>-20<y>.log

Below is an example of the advanced use of match patterns:

Advanced Match Pattern

But that's not all. RegName has a companion tool that runs as a console application, allowing you to achieve the same results from the command line. The command line version of RegName is called RegName.exe and is installed into the same location as the main application. For more information, start RegName.exe in a command prompt using:

C:\Program Files\MOBZystems\RegName>RegName /?

Download RegName

 Download RegName v1.0.3
(Windows Installer, 350 kB, requires the .NET Framework 2.0)

Comments? Bugs? Suggestions? Feature requests? Want the source code? Let us know!