Peters Flexible RenAmiNg Kit (PFrank)

cooolkub · Joined: 15 Jul 2008 Posts: 3

I had been searching for a file rename utility and stumbled on PFrank's by chance. First of all I must thank you profusely for such wonderful software and I absolutely see the genius in it , more importantly in you ( having seen so many utilities and they way they are built I can be very confident in saying this ).

Well coming to the main matter of this post , I have a file renaming scenario and after exploring PFrank for sometime I had come to a conclusion that I cannot get my job done through this software in a straight forward manner (the utility is absolutely great but I think my scenario is not very common) . I do have a workaround which involves multiple passes ( including one in which I also process the data outside of the appliction ). May be I have not looked enough. Here is the file renaming scenario:

I have a CSV file where say I have 10 words in the first column. These 10 words are actually part of folder names that I would like to replace with different words. The words that replaces the original words are in the second column (10 words , each word for every word in column 1 ) in the CSV file. For eg the CSV file looks like this:

bad,good
football,soccer

On renaming using the above data the result should be like this:
bad boy.jpg >>> good boy.jpg
football match.jpg >>> soccer match.jpg

Thank you for your help.

admin · Site Admin Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 448 Location: Canada

Looks like you need a way to import a 2 column csv file into the Custom Renaming Creator List.
Currently it can't do that but the capability can be added.
How many rows of search/replace pairs would you need to import?

If I were to add this capability, I would put the rows of the first column into the Creator List search column and the rows of the second column into the Creator List replace column.

Would that solve all the problems you are facing?

Peter.

cooolkub · Joined: 15 Jul 2008 Posts: 3

You said it right . I would like to import a two column CSV file with one of the columns containing the search-words ( preferably the first column ) , the other column containing the replace-words.

Regarding the number of rows,lets say I would prefer to have an unlimited number of entries ( I know we have to hit the limit somewhere ). Now I have about hundred different words to be replaced. If the functionality requires that I should break up in fixed numbers , I don't mind doing it.

If you are planning to add this capability I might also suggest one more enhancement. That is, the word replacing function might give two options a.)search and replace whole strings b.) Search inside strings and replace substrings (!?!) . My requirement would be satisfied with the option 'A' alone but I thought option 'B' too would also come in handy at some point and I am sure some one out there might be looking for this.

Thank you for an amazingly fast response and sorry for my late response, I had to attend to the physical world fr sometime. Smile

admin · Site Admin Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 448 Location: Canada

I have a beta version of PFrank for you if you'd like to try it out.
It's located at:

http://www3.telus.net/pfrank/PFrankSetup2.211.exe

This is the non-Vista version. If you need a vista version then let me know.
Once installed, run it, and from the File menu select 'Import Search/Replace List from ...", select your csv file and import it.
The Custom renaming creator will then be loaded with the content of the csv file and the summary panel will log the results of the importing.
Any valid regex or pre-defined command can be entered with this method so this should satisfy both your (a) and (b) requirements.

Peter.

cooolkub · Joined: 15 Jul 2008 Posts: 3

Hi Peter,

Trust all is well. I apologize for the late response. I have tested the beta and it works fine.

A few points that I noted and thought you should know:

1. When I import the CSV file through Import/Search replace, the List box is populated from the file . Understandably, on scanning , PFrank finds and replaces words even if the searched word is part of a larger string.

2. To search and replace whole words only, I edited the CSV file in a text editor and inserted a space in front of the word ( or it can be added at the end of the word too, depending on requirement ) and then imported the file into PFrank. Scan would show results with only whole words replaced.

And please also build one for Vista too.

This resolves my issue finally and am happy now. Thank you very much for your support. I will let know if I come across any uncommon behavior, as I use it.

Cooolkub

admin · Site Admin Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 448 Location: Canada

Thanks for the update!

The points you make are expected behaviour. The replace engine will replace all instances of matches for the specified search string. Adding the spaces is what you would have to do to replace words.

The next vista release wil include the new import feature.

Peter.