Command Prompt question

[BlaisePascal]

A "less than earth shattering" question.

Back in the good old days of DOS 3.3 if you had these files:

12fred.txt
12sam.txt
12joe.txt

then you could do the following with the rename command:

rename 12*.* *.*

and you would get:

fred.txt
sam.txt
joe.txt

It no longer works this way.

I used Windows Media Player to convert a bunch of songs off my CDs to Windows Media Audio (.wma) files and it put numbers in front of each of the songs (who knows why - Billy G. won't call me back).

Any ideas on how I can easily get rid of the numbers with a couple of commands or keystrokes? I'm too lazy to edit each filename.

 

[DonFanucci]

If I still had Visual Basic, I would write you a quick program to do it. 🙂

In DOS 6.0, which I believe is the last *real* release, I don't see why that wouldn't work. It's been way too long since I've worked hardcore with DOS, so I may be way off. Try working with the "?" ever? If not, it is a single character variable unlike the "*" which is a multiple character variable. Maybe the answer lies in working with the question mark instead?

😕

 

[eplebnista]

You could use one of the utilities from this Freeware page.

hth,
eplebnista

 

[CTho9305]

start -> run, "command" (or "cmd" for nt/2k/xp"). then try it the dos way 🙂

 

[Woodie]

I've run into the same issue under W2K. The way REN works has changed, probably to accomadate filenames with multiple "."s in them. I haven't spent the time to understand the new syntax rules.

--Woodie

 

[BlaisePascal]

Thanks for the ideas. The "xren" utility from Nonags freeware (suggested by eplebnista) did the trick.

There is still some hope for the command prompt!

 

[Saltin]

The command prompt is far from finished. I admin 2k servers and clients and I usually spend half of my time with the prompt. If you really want to get down and dirty with NT, it's still the only way to do it.