Renaming filenames based on date format

[ckjian]

Hi All,

I'm a PHP beginning who is trying to find out how to rename filenames in a folder to a specific pattern based on date format.

 

For example, in my folders there are:

 

VN21Nov2008-1.pdf

VN21Nov2008-2.pdf

VN21Nov2008-3.pdf

VN21Nov2008-4.pdf

VN21Nov2008-5.pdf

 

And, I want rename all the filenames to:

 

1VN211108.pdf

2VN211108.pdf

3VN211108.pdf

4VN211108.pdf

5VN211108.pdf

 

The folders contain about 1000+ files with different date.

 

I would like to know how to renames all the files to the pattern I want.

 

However, due to may PHP knowledge limitation, I just don't know where to start. I've done a search in this forum but I couldn't find a way to rename in bulk.

 

Hope somebody out there can help me out. I'll really appreciate it.

 

Thank you.

[Mark Baker]

<?php

$fileList = array( 'VN21Nov2008-1.pdf',
			   'VN21Nov2008-2.pdf',
			   'VN21Nov2008-3.pdf',
			   'VN21Nov2008-4.pdf',
			   'VN21Nov2008-5.pdf'
			 );

foreach ($fileList as $fileName) {
$fileDate = date('dmy',strtotime(substr($fileName,2,9)));
$newFileName = $fileName{12}.substr($fileName,0,2).$fileDate.substr($fileName,-4);
echo $newFileName.'<br />';
}

?>

[Adam]

VN21Nov2008-1.pdf
VN21Nov2008-2.pdf
VN21Nov2008-3.pdf
VN21Nov2008-4.pdf
VN21Nov2008-5.pdf

 

Are they all strictly in this format to start with?

 

Will be there any like:

 

VN1Nov2008-10.pdf  ??

 

I am asking because to use substr() you'd need to know the positioning of each section.

 

Adam

[Mark Baker]

<?php

$fileList = array( 'VN21Nov2008-1.pdf',
                   'VN21Nov2008-2.pdf',
                   'VN21Nov2008-3.pdf',
                   'VN21Nov2008-4.pdf',
                   'VN21Nov2008-5.pdf',
                   'VN21Nov2008-10.pdf',
                   'VN1Nov2008-12.pdf'
			 );

foreach ($fileList as $fileName) {
$prefix = substr($fileName,0,2);
$extension = pathinfo($fileName,PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
$fileName = substr($fileName,strlen($prefix),-1-strlen($extension));
$number = substr($fileName,strpos($fileName,'-')+1);
$fileName = substr($fileName,0,-1-strlen($number));
$fileDate = date('dmy',strtotime($fileName));

$newFileName = $number.$prefix.$fileDate.'.'.$extension;
echo $newFileName.'<br />';
}

?>

[ckjian]

VN21Nov2008-1.pdf
VN21Nov2008-2.pdf
VN21Nov2008-3.pdf
VN21Nov2008-4.pdf
VN21Nov2008-5.pdf

 

Are they all strictly in this format to start with?

 

Will be there any like:

 

VN1Nov2008-10.pdf  ??

 

I am asking because to use substr() you'd need to know the positioning of each section.

 

Adam

 

All the filenames shared the same pattern. Some other example are as below:

 

VN01Nov2008-1.pdf

VN04Nov2008-3.pdf

VN21Nov2008-14.pdf

 

The current pattern is:

VNdMY-(PageNo).pdf

 

The new pattern I'm trying to achieve is:

(PageNo)VNdmy.pdf

 

In array, is there any way to list the folder containing the PDF? Because, we have archive of 1000+ since 2007, I don't think I can put all the filenames in array.

 

Meanwhile, I'll try to play around with the code provided by Mark. Thank you Mark. Really appreciate it.

[Mark Baker]

I was only using an array to show my example code.

 

You whould best handle this within a readdir loop, but could also use scandir which would load a list of files for any given directory into an array as well.