Rename Files with PowerShell

PowerShell
Rename Files with PowerShell

If you’re used to renaming files at the command prompt you might be surprised to discover that to rename files with PowerShell requires a few more keystrokes.

To rename files with PowerShell we need to use a scriptblock to construct the new filename:

# Change the extensions from .bak to .backup
Get-Item '*.bak' |
    Rename-Item -Newname { $_.name -replace '.bak','.backup' }

This will change each file with the extension bak to the extension backup.

And if you’re a regular expressions junkie then -replace supports regular expressions inside the scriptblock too! You can have any valid PowerShell code inside the scriptblock as long as the output is a string for the new filename.