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Hi Amy, Like Mendeley, suggested previously, Zotero + ZotFile and a variety of BibTex tools will rename your PDFs neatly according to whatever rule you feed it. First step is of course to have your metadata in order - all of them will pull in metadata automagically, but some manual corrections and additions would be necessary before renaming the whole batch. Regards, Erwin ᐧ On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 6:15 PM, Pikas, Christina K. < [log in to unmask]> wrote: > Did anyone already suggest Mendeley - I think it will do this for you with > zero coding whatsoever. In fact, you can point Mendeley at the directory > and it will suck them in automatically and rename the pdfs if you have it > set that way. > > Of course this only works with published research articles - coding is > needed for the general case. > Christina > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of > Alexander Duryee > Sent: Friday, January 15, 2016 11:19 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] A smart bulk file name editor? > > Amy, > > It sounds like this is a three-step process for each file: > > 1) Feed the PDF (as a data blob) into a script > 2) Parse out the data that you're looking for (title, author, year) > 3) Build a string using your parsed data, and move the file to that new > filename > > 1 and 3 should be simple with any scripting language; unfortunately, 2 may > be very difficult. PDF is not a structured data format, so there's no > guarantee that the data you need can be easily parsed out. If the PDFs > were uniformly generated (e.g. they were all generated from LaTeX markup or > a single content management system) then it may be possible to parse out > information from the file. If not - for example, if the PDFs consist of > scanned pages - then you'll need to generate that data elsewhere (perhaps > from an existing catalog), create the new filenames that way, and feed that > list into a script/tool to rename the files. > > Best of luck, > --Alex > > On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Chris Moschini <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > It won't surprise you coders do this all the time and so there are 80 > > ways to do this, so your peril is choice not scarcity. > > > > Although there are a ton of tools that will do this for non-coders: > > https://www.google.com/webhp?q=file%20renamer > > > > On Windows robocopy is popular. > > > > The truth is though most coders just pick the programming language of > > their choice and go for it. The most common is Bash and regex. Bash is > > built-in to Linux and Macs and pretty easy to > > <https://git-for-windows.github.io/> > > get > > onto Windows <https://www.cygwin.com/>. It's an old and ugly language > > but it's also the kitchen sink of "I just need to do this quick > > thing." That said if you dislike old and ugly languages or unintuitive > > syntax or command names, pick a programming language you do like, or one > of the tools above. > > > > > > On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 10:56 AM, Amy Schuler > > <[log in to unmask]> > > wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > I'm looking for a smart bulk file editor, if it exists. > > > Specifically I'd like it to be able to move through a list of PDF > > > files that are published research papers, and rename them in this > > > approximate format, based on the contents of the file: > > > firstauthor_firstfewwordsoftitle_year.pdf > > > > > > I know this is probably a crazy dream. The bulk file editors that I > > > know about are more simple. They can bulk rename files according to > > > a pre-set pattern or they just remove/add/re-position bits from the > > > existing file string. > > > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > Amy Schuler > > > Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies > > > [log in to unmask] > > > > > >