Rename All Files in a Directory

I needed a script to quickly rename all files in a directory, so I came up with this elegant PHP solution.

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By. Jacob

Edited: 2019-09-30 01:52

I created this short php script to quickly rename all the files in a directory.

To control which part'(s) of the file to rename, you simply need to modify the regular expression used with preg_match.

The script can be run from a terminal window using php. I.e.: php rename.php

When used in a terminal, the script will output a list of files it has renamed. If you want to run the script from a browser, you should first send the appropriate mime type for plain text. I.e:

header("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8");

The script will not check for write permissions. You can do this yourself using is_writable()

The script will only rename files. To also rename directories, you should uncomment the is_dir() if check.

The PHP script itself:

$all_object = '';
$objects = array_diff(scandir('.'), array('..', '.')); // Removes "." and ".." from the array, since they are not needed.
foreach($objects as $object) { // Loops through the $objects array

  if (is_dir($object) == false) { // Check if $object is a directory (to only rename files)

    if (preg_match('/(.+)\-[a-z0-9_-]+(\.mp3)/i', $object, $matches)) {
      // The files to-be-renamed will match the pattern you provide for preg_match

      $all_object .= $matches[1] . $matches[2] . "\n"; // Add each $object to string for later output

      if(rename($object, $matches[1] . $matches[2]) == false) {
        // Attempt to rename the current $object, exit on failure.
        echo "\nFailed to rename file'(s)\n";exit();
      }

    }

  }
}

echo "\n"; // New line
echo 'Renamed: ' . $all_object;
echo "\n";

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