R: Rename files with a sequential numeric prefix

rename_seq {xfun} | R Documentation

## Rename files with a sequential numeric prefix

### Description

Rename a series of files and add an incremental numeric prefix to the filenames. For example, files ‘a.txt’, ‘b.txt’, and ‘c.txt’ can be renamed to ‘1-a.txt’, ‘2-b.txt’, and ‘3-c.txt’.

### Usage

    rename_seq(
      pattern = "^[0-9]+-.+[.]Rmd$",
      format = "auto",
      replace = TRUE,
      start = 1,
      dry_run = TRUE
    )

### Arguments

`pattern` | A regular expression for `list.files()` to obtain the files to be renamed. For example, to rename `.jpeg` files, use `pattern = "[.]jpeg$"`.
`format` | The format for the numeric prefix. This is passed to `sprintf()`. The default format is `"%0Nd"` where `N = floor(log10(n)) + 1` and `n` is the number of files, which means the prefix may be padded with zeros. For example, if there are 150 files to be renamed, the format will be `"%03d"` and the prefixes will be `001`, `002`, ..., `150`.
`replace` | Whether to remove existing numeric prefixes in filenames.
`start` | The starting number for the prefix (it can start from 0).
`dry_run` | Whether to not really rename files. To be safe, the default is `TRUE`. If you have looked at the new filenames and are sure the new names are what you want, you may rerun `rename_seq()` with `dry_run = FALSE)` to actually rename files.

### Value

A named character vector. The names are original filenames, and the vector itself is the new filenames.

### Examples

    xfun::rename_seq()
    xfun::rename_seq("[.](jpeg|png)$", format = "%04d")

[Package xfun version 0.16 Index]