FileName Manager 1.3.1

by W. Brian Dill

INDEX


INSPIRATION AND PURPOSE

FileName Manager, as the name suggests, is a file name management utility. It is used to uniformly manipulate all of the file names in a folder. It was originally created out of my need to manipulate the names of digital photos that I took. The default name that the download software gave the files was undesirable, and it was too much of a pain to rename each of them as they downloaded, so I made an application that would do it all at once for you. It is also hand to modify mp3 files.


BRIEF TUTORIAL

The program is reasonably self explanatory. There are five main areas of operation: 1) Apply Modifications to, 2) Append characters, 3) Replace Characters, 4) Append Numbers, 5) Remove characters.

  1. Apply Modifications to: [ Filenames | Extensions ] - Specifies whether the modifications that you make will apply to the filename (the name before the extension) or the extension.

  2. Append Characters - The text that you type in the upper text box will be appended to the Beginning or End (depending on which you select) of every file in the directory that is visible to the left. As soon as you execute the command, you will see the changes made to the filenames in the box at the lower left of the screen.

  3. Replace Characters - Allows you to replace specified text string in any of the filenames with any other string, provided that it does not contain characters that are not valid for filenames. These characters include: \ / : * ? " < > |.

  4. Append Numbers - This function lets you append incrementing integers at the Beginning or End (depending on which you select) of every file in the selected directory which is visible to the left. The default is to start with the number 1, and count up from there, but you can enter your starting number in the box labeled "Starting with". The "# of Digits" drop down list will indicate how many digits are used in the operation. This will let you "zero-pad" your numbers as you desire. This has the benefit of keeping the files in alphabetical order (even though they are numbers). You must have at least as many digits as the number of files in the directory. For example, if you have 20 files, you must have at least 2 digits (01, 02, .... , 20), but you can have more if you wish. If you were to use 3 digits, the result would be (001, 002, ... ,020).

  5. Remove Characters - this function lets you remove n number of characters from the Beginning or End (depending on which you select) of each file in the selected directory (which is visible to the left). This function was essentially included so that you can un-do one of the previous operations that you have done if you messed up. WARNING! Be careful with this function! Once you remove characters from a filename, the action cannot be undone. Be sure not to remove too many characters before you click the "Remove" button. There is a warning message before you can execute this command as a safety measure.



MENU COMMANDS

File -> Exit Exits the program.
Edit -> Undo Reverts the filenames to their previous state.
Edit -> Copy File Names to Clipboard Copies all files in the directory to the clipboard. This does not modify the files an any way. Once the files are copied to the clipboard you can paste them into any application.
Edit -> Space to Underscore Converts any space in all file names to an underscore character (_)
Edit -> Macros -> Date at Beginning Appends the date to the beginning of the filename in the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD
Edit -> Macros -> Date at End Appends the date to the end of the filename in the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD
Edit -> Underscore to Space Converts any underscore characters in all file names to spaces.
Tools -> Options Sets some options for the application.
Help -> View Readme File Displays this Readme file.
Help -> About Displays information about the Program.



EXAMPLES

Lets say you just took 40 digital pictures that you want to archive in a meaningful way. Lets say the filenames for those pictures are "DCP0041" to "DCP0080"; not very meaningful. Using FileName Manager, you can easily transform those filenames to something a little more useful. Here is an example of what I have done in the past with some of my pics.

1) Append "_20020125" to the End of the file name (where 20020125 is the current date) 2) Append "_" to the Beginning of the file name. 3) Append Numbers with 3 Digits, Starting with 1 at the Beginning of the file name. 4) Append "bd" at the Beginning of the file name (where "bd" are my initials).

This leaves us with files that have the convention "bd001_DCP0040_20020125.jpg" Why do something like this? Well, when I look at the file, I immediately know that this is the first picture (001) that I took (bd) on Jan. 25, 2002 (20020125). Pretty neat huh?


VERSION HISTORY

FileName Manager ver 1.0 (1999)

Core functionality created. Basic error handling.


FileName Manager ver 1.1 (1999)

Added "Underscore to Space" and cleaned up the interface.
Added Error Logging to a text file in the application directory.
Added Copy File Names to Clipboard function.


FileName Manager ver 1.2 (2002-01-10)

Added Replace with functionality.
Added Options window with two option settings.
Added "date at beginning" in addition to "date at end" macro. Modified the date format to be ISO standard, i.e. YYYY-MM-DD


FileName Manager ver 1.3 (2002-01-24)

Added functionality to let the user modify file extensions. This is in addition to the ability to modify the main filename (which is the crux of the application.)
Gave user the option not to warn before performing "Undo"
Made the undo function more robust. Now refreshes the list box just before modifications to help prevent issues with other users or applications modifying files while Filename Manager is modifying filenames.

FileName Manager ver 1.3.1 (2002-02-01)

Minor bug fixes.


About The Author

W. Brian Dill is a self proclaimed computer geek. He works with various computer technologies from network operating systems to programming languages to graphics packages. He has worked as a consultant creating web based applications using Visual Interdev and ASP with VBScript/JavaScript client side scripting. He is also an ACE in Adobe Photoshop 5.0.

When he isn't out taking 1000 pictures with his digital camera, he is either at home in his mini-studio writing songs using MIDI tools like Sonar (CakeWalk), playing guitar to the songs that he has written, killing bad guys in Counter-Strike, or kickin' some Zerg butt in StarCraft.

Email: bdill at leftandwrite.com
Personal Website: http://www.leftandwrite.com/brian


© Copyright 2002
W. Brian Dill