There are certain situations where I need to remove one or more words from selected file names.

One example is after added a set of words that contain a typo.

An implementation of this would also addresses #8

Constraints

This issue is a central spot to collect ideas on how to come up with a consistent concept to remove words. This has to work on one file as well as on a group of selected files. It has to work on file names that end with the same set of words as well as with sets of files that do have completely different file names.

Furthermore, there should be ways to deal with edge cases. A few examples:

• Removing word(s) would produce file name conflicts (two ore more files with same file name in same directory)
• User requested to remove words that are not available in file names
• Resulting file name would be empty

Brainstorming

• The user might be able to interactively enter -2 which results in removing the last two words (separated by spaces or underscores) from the file name.
• Similar to removing tags with filetags, the user might be able to interactively enter -"foo bar" or -foo to remove the words "foo bar" or "foo" from the end of the existing file names of selected files. If not found, nothing gets removed. Filetags are ignored and are not considered being part of the file name here.
• ...

Contribute!

Please add your ideas here as well!

The option --smart-prepend aims to keep time stamps (added by date2name) in front of the file name. However, for stamps assigned with either --compact, --month, or --short, the pattern generated differs; here, the text is leading ahead of the time stamp.

For example, in a live session of Xubuntu 20.04.2 LTS/Fossa and a pristine checkout of appendfilename/master, these are the observations:

• compact time stamp:

xubuntu@xubuntu:~/Desktop/appendfilename/appendfilename$ python3 __init__.py 20211231_test.txt --smart-prepend --verbose -t book
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 text found: [book]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 extracting list of files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 len(args) [1]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 1 filenames found: [20211231_test.txt]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 iterate over files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 options.smartprepend is set with ||book| |20211231_test|.txt
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 options.smartprepend is set with |<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885 can't find a date/time-stamp, doing a simple prepend
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,885  renaming "20211231_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,886       ⤷   "book 20211231_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:01:24,886 successfully finished.
Please press <Enter> for finishing...

• month pattern:

xubuntu@xubuntu:~/Desktop/appendfilename/appendfilename$ python3 __init__.py 2021-12_test.txt --smart-prepend --verbose -t book
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 text found: [book]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 extracting list of files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 len(args) [1]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 1 filenames found: [2021-12_test.txt]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 iterate over files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 options.smartprepend is set with ||book| |2021-12_test|.txt
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 options.smartprepend is set with |<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884 can't find a date/time-stamp, doing a simple prepend
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,884  renaming "2021-12_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,885       ⤷   "book 2021-12_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:04:26,885 successfully finished.
Please press <Enter> for finishing...

• short pattern:

xubuntu@xubuntu:~/Desktop/appendfilename/appendfilename$ python3 __init__.py 211231_test.txt --smart-prepend --verbose -t book
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,694 text found: [book]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,694 extracting list of files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 len(args) [1]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 1 filenames found: [211231_test.txt]
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 iterate over files ...
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 options.smartprepend is set with ||book| |211231_test|.txt
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 options.smartprepend is set with |<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>|<class 'str'>
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 can't find a date/time-stamp, doing a simple prepend
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695  renaming "211231_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695       ⤷   "book 211231_test.txt"
DEBUG    2022-01-09 13:05:26,695 successfully finished.
Please press <Enter> for finishing...

These observations are coherent with the automatic testing with the test script for pytest for Python 3 just extended, e.g., by

pytest-3  test_appendfilename.py -m "smart" -v

Suggestion.

The code has some constants Iike separators and ignored words that are hardcoded. Since I used pip to install, it is hard to customize this. My suggestion would be to move these constants to a hidden config file in $HOME, like $HOME/.appendfilename or $HOME/.config/appendfilename.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/68721/where-should-user-configuration-files-go

In linux not having any spaces in file names can have lots of advantages, so is there any way appendfilename uses _ between words instead of spaces? Thanks in advance.

appendfilename functions differently for files stamped by date2name in either default, or --withtime time stamp.

Manual replication:

touch ping.txt
date2name ping.txt

appendfilename 2022-01-06_ping.txt -t new --smart-prepend

to yield

ERROR    Error while trying to build new filename: <class 'TypeError'>
ERROR    1 error(s) occurred. Please check output above.

An analogue programmatic replication with the test script approach (just submitted, incomplete coverage, under construction) with pytest/pytest-3 for Python3:

pytest-3 test_appendfilename.py -m "smart" -v

File 2021-12-31T18.48.22_test.txt is processed as 2021-12-31T18.48.22 book test.txt and thus successfully removed by the test script. However, test file 2021-12-31.txt is processed to 2021-12-31 book txt loosing the period en face of the file extension. (File test.txt is processed by appendfilename to book test.txt, thus indicating appendfilename works fine on this one.).

So which command can we use for removing previously added file name additions? Thanks in advance.

This does not work here.
-x /home/mj/snippy/geeqie/appendfilename/appendfilename/__init__.py --remove "${@}"

OS: Windows 10
Installed via: pip
I am happy to provide more information if needed.

Calling appendfilename with --smart-prepend option works as expected when given relative path:

appendfilename --smart-prepend relative/path/to/"2023-02-14 file.txt"
      ... with interactive input of "beginning" results in:
	  "2023-02-14 beginning file.txt"

However, calling it with an absolute path ignores the timestamp and acts like normal --prepend option:

appendfilename --smart-prepend absolute/path/to/"2023-02-14 file.txt"
      ... with interactive input of "beginning" results in:
	  "beginning 2023-02-14 file.txt"

Not sure why. Maybe you have some useful hints?
Thanks for sharing. Cool youtube video.

appendfilename should rename all linked "parent links" as long as the file name is the same. However, this seems to work only for the first link and not for all.

How to reproduce the issue

1. create two nested TagTrees with https://github.com/novoid/filetags from files/* to tagtrees1/ and then from tagtrees1/tag/* to tagtrees2/ (all within the same parent directory)

• this results in a file within tagtrees2/tag/foo -- tag.txt that points to tagtrees1/tag/foo -- tag.txt which points to files/foo -- tag.txt

2. appendfilename -t "foobar" results in:

• tagtrees2/tag/foo foobar -- tag.txt
• tagtrees1/tag/foo foobar -- tag.txt
• files/foo -- tag.txt <-- here, the renaming/recursion stops which is wrong. It should be: files/foo foobar -- tag.txt

Educated guess how to fix this

Adapt def handle_file_and_symlink_source_if_found(filename, text, dryrun) so that it works recursively just like filetags does with tags.

When working with tag filter view or Tagtrees view of filetag, shortcuts are created whose file names correspond to the original file (but directory differs).

appendfilename is supposed to add additional text to the shortcut file as well as the original file (as long as their file names are same). This does not work with Windows 10.

I am trying some of your tools and found a need to prepend some text to the filename. That is, between the date/timestamp and the original filename.

For example the command

appendfilename --prepend --text="Invoice" *.pdf

would change the name of

2018-11-16 Apple 123456.pdf

to

2018-11-16 Invoice Apple 123456.pdf

I had to take a look at the code in this repo to find the available command line switches.
It would be nice if a --help and/org -h switch would show the syntax. Or, the syntax could be shown if no arguments are passed at all (instead of the current error message).

Hello Karl,
I learned about your tools by watching your presentation at the Frazer Linuxtage and tried them out afterwards.
I think your tools are absolutely great and I can use them to improve my workflow. I'm using Thunar as a file manager and I integrated your tools through the GUI Edit / Custom Actions, so that I have them in the right click menu. There was no problem with that at all and I think it is easier than editing the config of Thunar the way you are mentioning it in the readme. The only thing that is a little bit strange on my desktop is the position of the window that is opening in interactive mode. But this is an issue that comes because of my windows manager (i3) and is not related to thunar or your tools.

HAGO
Bjoern