

Ask HN: How could I automate the process of cleaning up my folder structure? - mna

One of my key &quot;Documents&quot; folders has numerous files and subfolders several layers deep that do not adhere to a standard naming convention. Is there a way to quickly renaming all the files&#x2F;folders without having to do so one by one?
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sehrope
Not sure your OS but if you're running anything with a decent shell (eg Linux,
BSD, or Mac OS X) you can do this all from the command line. You should be
able to do the majority of what you want with a combination of
find/while/sed/mv. If the old-to-new naming scheme is too complicated for sed
then replace it with a awk/perl/python/ruby.

If you're relatively new to using the command line to do things like this (I'm
guessing yes) make sure to backup your documents first. It's _very_ easy to
accidentally delete/rename all your files with a couple typos (but don't let
that scare you off from learning).

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HarshaThota
It doesn't help with renaming per se but Belvedere can help keep things
organized.

[http://lifehacker.com/341950/belvedere-automates-your-
self+c...](http://lifehacker.com/341950/belvedere-automates-your-
self+cleaning-pc)

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jseeba
Try [http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/](http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/)

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lazylizard
um.. [http://www.hiteksoftware.com/mize/task-
scheduler.htm](http://www.hiteksoftware.com/mize/task-scheduler.htm) is quite
amusing..

