Rename all files in a folder

Rename every file in path with a date prefix (YYYY-MM-DD_) and a clean, lowercase, hyphenated name (see ger_fname()). Files that already start with a date prefix are skipped.

Usage

ger_batch_rename(
  path,
  prefix = c("modification", "birth", "access", "change"),
  dry_run = FALSE
)

Arguments

path

path to folder

prefix

which file date to use for the prefix ("modification", "birth", "access", or "change"). "birth" falls back to "modification" on systems that don't record it.

dry_run

logical, preview the new names without renaming?

Value

a data.frame with the old and new file paths (invisibly unless dry_run = TRUE)

Examples

tmp <- file.path(tempdir(), "rename-example")
dir.create(tmp)
file.create(file.path(tmp, c("My File.txt", "Joe's DATA (final).csv")))
#> [1] TRUE TRUE
ger_batch_rename(tmp, dry_run = TRUE)
#>                                                     old
#> 1 /tmp/Rtmpd22aGr/rename-example/Joe's DATA (final).csv
#> 2            /tmp/Rtmpd22aGr/rename-example/My File.txt
#>                                                             new
#> 1 /tmp/Rtmpd22aGr/rename-example/2026-09-25_joes-data-final.csv
#> 2         /tmp/Rtmpd22aGr/rename-example/2026-09-25_my-file.txt