Renaming files in python

Asked 11 years, 10 months ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed k times. I want to change a. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Should be noted that if the files are not in the working directory you will need the full path.

It's worth noting that this will silently overwrite files on Unix-like systems but fail with OSError on Windows systems. I know of no easy way around this - see here. If the user actually wants the file to be replaced on any operating system, one should use os. Show 3 more comments. Abdul Razak Abdul Razak 2, 2 2 gold badges 15 15 silver badges 23 23 bronze badges.

Why would you do this instead of the accepted answer? Seems far more complicated — rbennell. Well rbennell, most of this answer is an explanation.

The answer is really just the three lines at the end. Furthermore, the accepted answer is made explicitly for that very name change. This answer provides a way to show how you can manipulate the filename to preserve parts that you want in the path or name of the file. Furthermore, the pathlib library is introduced in python 3.

Thank you idjaw, your comment is a good answer to a basic question of us beginners, a simple Why did you did that? Also, it is refreshing to see non-hostile approach on internet to what is often considered as ignorant. Using f-strings simplifies it even more. Show 6 more comments. Andy Balaam Andy Balaam 5, 6 6 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 35 35 bronze badges.

If the file is open, for instance, shutil. With shutil. Just not worth it when a better tool exists: os. If you are curious, you can read more about os.

When you explore a new concept, library, or framework, it is always a good idea to read the official documentation. To rename a single file, we need to enter the file's current name with its current location and its new name with its destination. For this tutorial, I collected some stock photos that we are going to rename in Python. Here is my initial photos folder.

First, we are going to rename this beautiful picture of a red sky. As you can see, the file name is not very readable. To get started, we can get the file name, type, and location with properties.

We will see later that we can use Python to get the file names in our directory. A Python raw string is a normal string prefixed with the letter r. It treats characters like backslashes as normal characters and not as escape ones.

This ensures the correctness of the path so that we can move and rename files in Python on Windows. Our file has been successfully renamed! You can find more information on os. Now that we understand the mechanism behind the process of renaming a file in Python , it is important to note that renaming is like moving and vice-versa. However, if the source and target locations are on different partitions, drives, or devices, os.

If this is the case, use shutil. Therefore, it does not need to be installed. With shutil. Are you ready?

We need to import the shutil module and state the initial path of the file and its destination. To make the code more readable, I assigned the initial path to a variable called src and the destination path to dst.

So, in this example, we learned how to rename and move files in Python. When you use shutil. In such a case, shutil. If you do not want to change the file name, you do not need to pass it as a destination parameter. For example:. You can learn more about shutil. Also, feel free to check our course on working with files and directories in Python. We can also use shutil. Unlike shutil. You can find out more about this in the documentation here as well as in our course on working with files and directories in Python.

Python pathlib is an object-oriented framework to handle filesystem paths. If you are wondering how to choose between pathlib and the os module, there are a few key differences. The os module uses a string representation of paths while pathlib creates an object of the directory. The use of pathlib allows for better readability and maintainability of the code, as well as portability to different operating systems. In this example, we will take a new picture and rename it using pathlib.

As you can see, our picture name is not very readable at the moment. Pathlib has a clean and intuitive way of building up paths, which we can write as:. Once the path of our current file is set with the Path class, we then use the rename method with the new path and file name as the argument. Imagine that you have to prepare a dataset with thousands of pictures to train a computer vision model. It is simply not doable by hand.

Instead, we can batch rename files in Python. Again, we will use os. However, this time, we will need to write a function to loop through the directory and rename the files one after another. Do not forget to add the folder path in the destination. We will use the os. We could change the name of our file using this code:. First, we import the os module. This allows us to access the os. Then, we declare two Python variables. Next, we use os.

Now, suppose we want to rename multiple files. We can also accomplish this goal using the os. Right now, this directory contains the following files:. First, we import os into our code, so that we can work with the os. This list is generated using the os. Then, our code uses os. When used with the os. This tutorial discussed, with examples, the basics of the os module and how to use the os. Do you want to learn more about coding in Python? Check out our How to Learn Python guide.

Two months after graduating, I found my dream job that aligned with my values and goals in life! About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers.

Learn about the CK publication. James Gallagher is a self-taught programmer and the technical content manager at Career Karma. James has written hundreds of programming tutorials, and he frequently contributes to publications like Codecademy, Treehouse, Repl.