List, rename and delete files using Python-style regex.
THIS PROGRAM IS STILL IN THE ALPHA TESTING STAGE SO PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU KEEP REGULAR BACKUPS AND DO NOT USE IT ON ANY IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS OR FILES
reFILE should be available on the PyPI repository so installing should be as simple as:
$ pip install reFILE
Alternatively you can clone the github repository and use setuptools, like so:
$ git clone https://github.com/Sean1708/reFILE.git $ python setup.py install
reFILE uses the pathlib module which only has tentative support for Python 2. For this reason, it is reccomended that you use Python 3 to download reFILE. Having said this, however, reFILE should still work on Python 2 installations.
If you find any bugs or just generally have somee issues, feel free to open an issue ticket at my github repo.
Alternatively, if you fancy fixing it yourself just send me a pull request or diff file via github and I'll be happy to incorporate your code.
I have plans to make this package usable as a library but at the moment am unsure how best to approach it. If you have any thoughts feel free to contact me.
The refile command line utility performs three useful tasks on a directory of files; listing files which match a regular expression, renaming files which matche a regular expression and deleting files which match a regular expression.
Usage:
$ refile -h $ refile ls [-h] [-rqvn] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR] $ refile mv [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] [-m DIR] PATTERN REPLACE [DIR] $ refile rm [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]
To avoid issues with variable expansion and special characters on the command line it is advisable to enclose the regular expression in single quotes:
$ refile ls '.*'
without the quotes this would cause a list of all files whose name starts with
a period to be passed to refile which would, unsurprisingly, lead to
unexpected behaviour.
If no directory is specified, the current directory is searched. A directory can be specified as an absolute path or a relative one, if an absolute path is used then filenames will be printed as an absolute path and similarly for relative paths. Tilde expansion is performed at the command line but not within the program so wrapping your directory in single quotes is ill-advised.
All options in reFILE must be specified after the subcommand. Many of the options are shared between subcommands, they are:
| -h, --help | print a useful help message |
| -r, --recurse | search directories recursively |
| -q, --quiet | supress all output except errors |
| -v, --verbose | print extra information |
| -L LIM, --limit=LIM | |
| maximum depth limit when searching recursively | |
| -I PAT, --ignore=PAT | |
| ignore any files which match the regex PAT | |
Usage:
$ refile ls [-h] [-rqvl] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]
The ls subcommand lists all files in the directory DIR which match the
regular expression PATTERN. Internally this is run using the re.search
function so the pattern can match any part of the filename, not just the start.
| -h, --help | print a useful help message |
| -n, --no-column | |
| suppress columnated output | |
| -l, --long | print extra information about the files |
Usage:
$ refile mv [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] [-m DIR] [-D FORMAT]
PATTERN REPLACE [DIR]
The mv subcommand renames any file in the directory DIR which matches
the regular expression PATTERN to the name RENAME. This is run
internally using the re.sub function.
If PATTERN matches more than once in the filename then each match will be
replaced by the string REPLACE providing the matches don't overlap. If the
regular expression matches the entire filename then PATTERN and REPLACE
must contain groups and backreferences to avoid files overwriting eachother.
This is not checked at run-time so it is up to the user to ensure proper usage.
If the -D option is specified the creation time of the file will be
prepended to the REPLACE string before the rename takes place. The
FORMAT string is passed to the time.strftime function so refer to that
for more information.
| -h, --help | print a useful help message |
| -d, --directories | |
| rename directories | |
| -i, --confirm | prompt for confirmation before renaming files |
| -f, --force | never prompt for confirmation |
| -m DIR, --moveto=DIR | |
| move files into directory DIR | |
| -D FORMAT, --date=FORMAT | |
| prepend creation time according to strftime format | |
Usage:
$ refile rm [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]
The rm subcommand deletes all files in the directory DIR which match
regular expression PATTERN. The search is performed identically to the
ls subcommand so a good way to ensure that you are deleting the correct
files is to run the command as ls first.
| -h, --help | print a useful help message |
| -d, --directories | |
| delete directories if empty | |
| -i, --confirm | prompt for confirmation before deleting files |
| -f, --force | never prompt for confirmation |