[R] recursively rename dir and files

[mbressan at arpa.veneto.it]

hi jim

thank you very much for your help: what a nice piece of code!

inspired by your neat solution let me here post a slight variation upon
your lines which is now also dealing also with caps in file and dir names
(a potentially useful function for the proper "housekeeping" of the wd)

it works but there is one potentially "dangerous" drawback (to be somehow
controlled): it renames the R code file eventually present in the wd which
is usually named something like *.R which is renamed as *.r

I definitely need to think a viable solution to avoid that problem...

####

setwd(".")
dir.create("./My Dir with Spaces and Caps")
dir.create("./My Dir with Spaces and Caps/My Sub Dir With Spaces and Caps")
file.create("./My Dir with Spaces and Caps/My Dir file With Spaces and
Caps.txt")
file.create("./My Dir with Spaces and Caps/My Sub Dir With Spaces and
Caps/My Sub Dir File With Spaces and Caps.txt")
file.create("./My Dir with Spaces and Caps/My Sub Dir With Spaces and
Caps/MySubDirFileJustWithCaps.txt")

#new function
recursive_replace_lowercase<-function(path=".", replace=" ", with="_",
lowercase=TRUE) {

  # this is the base case

  filelist<-list.files(path, full.names=TRUE)

  if (lowercase) {

    for(filename in filelist)
      file.rename(filename,gsub(replace,with,tolower(filename)))

  } else {

    for(filename in filelist)
      file.rename(filename,gsub(replace,with,filename))
  }

  # and this is the recursive part

  dirlist<-list.dirs(path, full.names=TRUE, recursive=FALSE)

  if(length(dirlist)) {

    for(dirname in dirlist)
      recursive_replace_lowercase(dirname, replace=replace, with=with,
lowercase=lowercase)
  }
}

recursive_replace_lowercase()


> Hi maxbre,
> Try this:
>
> recursive_replace<-function(path=".",replace=" ",with="_") {
>  filelist<-list.files(path,full.names=TRUE)
>  for(filename in filelist) {
>   if(length(grep(replace,filename)))
>    file.rename(filename,gsub(replace,with,filename))
>  }
>  dirlist<-list.dirs(path,full.names=TRUE,recursive=FALSE)
>  if(length(dirlist)) {
>   for(dirname in dirlist)
>    recursive_replace(dirname,replace=replace,with=with)
>  }
> }
>
> Jim
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 5:58 AM, maxbre <mbressan at arpa.veneto.it> wrote:
>
>> this is my reproducible example
>>
>> setwd(".")
>> dir.create("./my dir with space")
>> dir.create("./my dir with space/my sub dir with space")
>> file.create("./my dir with space/my dir file with space.txt")
>> file.create("./my dir with space/my sub dir with space/my sub dir file
>> with
>> space.txt")
>>
>> now I need to rename recursively all dirs and files in order to get rid
>> of
>> spaces
>>
>> the following attempt is not getting to the point...
>>
>> mylist<-dir(".", full.names=TRUE, recursive=TRUE, include.dirs=TRUE)
>>
>> for (i in mylist){
>>   file.rename(i, gsub(" ", "_", i))
>> }
>>
>> #or more simply...
>> file.rename(mydirs, gsub(" ", "_", mydirs))
>>
>> ...because (clearly) I got some warning messages like "can not rename
>> file
>> .... because it is not existing";
>> and I definitely understand that because in the process of renaming of
>> the
>> the upper level directory the full path of the nested directories and
>> files
>> is changed and any longer visible to the procedure...
>>
>> the problem now is that I'm not enough clear how to proceed with an
>> alternative strategy in order to properly sort out the problem...
>>
>> for reasons I'm not mentioning here I must stick with a solution in R
>> language
>>
>> any hint much appreciated
>>
>> thanks
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/recursively-rename-dir-and-files-tp4705667.html
>> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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>>
>