reFILE 0.4.1

Utility for manipulating files via regex.

List, rename and delete files using Python-style regex.

THIS PROGRAM IS STILL IN THE ALPHA TESTING STAGE SO PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU KEEP REGULAR BACKUPS AND DO NOT USE IT ON ANY IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS OR FILES

Installation

reFILE should be available on the PyPI repository so installing should be as simple as:

$ pip install reFILE

Alternatively you can clone the github repository and use setuptools, like so:

$ git clone https://github.com/Sean1708/reFILE.git
$ python setup.py install

reFILE uses the pathlib module which only has tentative support for Python 2. For this reason, it is reccomended that you use Python 3 to download reFILE. Having said this, however, reFILE should still work on Python 2 installations.

Issues

If you find any bugs or just generally have somee issues, feel free to open an issue ticket at my github repo.

Alternatively, if you fancy fixing it yourself just send me a pull request or diff file via github and I’ll be happy to incorporate your code.

Library

I have plans to make this package usable as a library but at the moment am unsure how best to approach it. If you have any thoughts feel free to contact me.

Documentation

The refile command line utility performs three useful tasks on a directory of files; listing files which match a regular expression, renaming files which matche a regular expression and deleting files which match a regular expression.

Usage:

$ refile -h
$ refile ls [-h] [-rqvn] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]
$ refile mv [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] [-m DIR] PATTERN REPLACE [DIR]
$ refile rm [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]

General Usage

To avoid issues with variable expansion and special characters on the command line it is advisable to enclose the regular expression in single quotes:

$ refile ls '.*'

without the quotes this would cause a list of all files whose name starts with a period to be passed to refile which would, unsurprisingly, lead to unexpected behaviour.

If no directory is specified, the current directory is searched. A directory can be specified as an absolute path or a relative one, if an absolute path is used then filenames will be printed as an absolute path and similarly for relative paths. Tilde expansion is performed at the command line but not within the program so wrapping your directory in single quotes is ill-advised.

Options

All options in reFILE must be specified after the subcommand. Many of the options are shared between subcommands, they are:

-h, --help

print a useful help message

-r, --recurse

search directories recursively

-q, --quiet

supress all output except errors

-v, --verbose

print extra information

-L LIM, --limit=LIM

maximum depth limit when searching recursively

-I PAT, --ignore=PAT

ignore any files which match the regex PAT

Listing Files

Usage:

$ refile ls [-h] [-rqvl] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]

The ls subcommand lists all files in the directory DIR which match the regular expression PATTERN. Internally this is run using the re.search function so the pattern can match any part of the filename, not just the start.

Options

-h, --help

print a useful help message

-n, --no-column

suppress columnated output

-l, --long

print extra information about the files

Renaming Files

Usage:

$ refile mv [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] [-m DIR] [-D FORMAT]
            PATTERN REPLACE [DIR]

The mv subcommand renames any file in the directory DIR which matches the regular expression PATTERN to the name RENAME. This is run internally using the re.sub function.

If PATTERN matches more than once in the filename then each match will be replaced by the string REPLACE providing the matches don’t overlap. If the regular expression matches the entire filename then PATTERN and REPLACE must contain groups and backreferences to avoid files overwriting eachother. This is not checked at run-time so it is up to the user to ensure proper usage.

If the -D option is specified the creation time of the file will be prepended to the REPLACE string before the rename takes place. The FORMAT string is passed to the time.strftime function so refer to that for more information.

Options

-h, --help

print a useful help message

-d, --directories

rename directories

-i, --confirm

prompt for confirmation before renaming files

-f, --force

never prompt for confirmation

-m DIR, --moveto=DIR

move files into directory DIR

-D FORMAT, --date=FORMAT

prepend creation time according to strftime format

Deleting Files

Usage:

$ refile rm [-h] [-rqvdif] [-L LIM] [-I PAT] PATTERN [DIR]

The rm subcommand deletes all files in the directory DIR which match regular expression PATTERN. The search is performed identically to the ls subcommand so a good way to ensure that you are deleting the correct files is to run the command as ls first.

Options

-h, --help

print a useful help message

-d, --directories

delete directories if empty

-i, --confirm

prompt for confirmation before deleting files

-f, --force

never prompt for confirmation