Freename - Freeform batch file renaming

Have you ever needed to rename a bunch of files? Did you do it by hand? Or did you to hunt for a tool, only then having to specify a number of arcane rules about string substitutions and substring copying, getting it right by a lengthy process of trial-and-error?

No more! With Freename you can take a power tool already in your arsenal (your trusty text editor of choice!) and apply that to the same task.

How does it work?

When you use Freename to rename a bunch of files, it will send a text file with all filenames to your text editor.

At that point, you can use all available tools of your text editor to change the filenames into whatever you want them to be. You can edit them by hand, you can do a search-and-replace for substrings, and with the right text editors you can use regular expressions, block modifications and lots of things more.

You then close your editor, and Freename will carry change the filenames exactly into what you wrote.

Advantages of using Freename:

• You don't have to learn any new interface: Freename works with the same text editing interface you're already used to;
• Freename's power is not limited to what I arbitrarily decided it should be able to do: it can do everything your text editor can do. Change that, extend it with scripts, and suddenly Freename has become a lot more powerful as well;
• You can immediately see how your new filenames will turn out. No longer do you have to use trial-and-error to get the renames just right.

Text editor

Obviously, the choice of your text editor will have a great impact on how useful Freename will turn out to be.

• Vim / Emacs – Of course, there is the eternal debate which of these editors is "better". They are both very powerful and will complement Freename nicely.
• Notepad – If you don't have a favourite text editor, even Notepad can do search and replace, and you can more easily copy-and-paste text in it. Even using Notepad still beats the pants off of renaming with Explorer.
• Other text editors...? I don't know many of them because I'm a die-hard Vim user, but drop me a line if you want to recommend a particularly good one.

Related projects

• I've just discovered two tools that perform exactly the same task as Freename in the UNIX world: vidir and mvedit. And I like their names better :).