How to change order of a six figure number somwhere

Bulk Rename Utility How-To's

How to change order of a six figure number somwhere

Postby DGH » Tue Mar 24, 2020 11:18 am

I'm new to this utility, so please bear with me if I'm not expressing everything correctly. It clearly has potential but I can see no easy way to solve my problem.

I have several thousand pdf files that I want to rename. Each one is a specific document and the name includes the date of that document expressed as a six figure number. So a typical document might be abc def 240320 gh.pdf Each file name may be a different length in total but they do include a six figure number somewhere which to me represents a date, but not in strict date format. In that example it is today's date expressed in the order day, month and year. I see there are postings dealing with standard date formats but not a simple number that needs to be rearranged.

I now want to change that sequence to year, month and day, so my example would become 200324.

Each file name contains a six figure number but no other numbers.

However, the number does not necessarily start in exactly the same place. It could start at character 10 but that could easily be 20.

Therefore, what I need is a way of selecting the six figure number from each file name, splitting that number into thirds and rearranging the sequence of that number. Can the bulk rename utility be used for this?

Just a thought. If it could work from a previously determined position in the filename, so that it would change this number sequence only if the numbers started at character 10, could a filter be applied that would do that, leaving the other files unchanged? If so, perhaps the next batch run could start at character 11, and this process would be repeated until every file had been changed. It would be laborious but better than nothing.

I hope you can help.
DGH
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 24, 2020 10:50 am

Re: How to change order of a six figure number somwhere

Postby therube » Tue Mar 24, 2020 11:51 am

The same basic concept as, viewtopic.php?p=12723#p12723 except that instead of wanting to find:

Code: Select all
_\d\d_\d\d_\d\d\d\d\_

you're wanting:
Code: Select all
\d\d\d\d\d\d

Then, like there, it is just a matter of separating those six digits out & rearranging them as needed.
therube
 
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Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2016 6:23 pm


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