ReName!

Table of Contents

Definitions

ReName! is THE Tracker Add-On for BeOS users. It provides you with a way to rename multiple files at once. ReName! allows you to add, remove or change file extensions. It also allows you to change the capitialization of your files, and do a search and replace on your file names. ReName! also allows you to prepend or append text to multiple file names!

Installation: [top]

Well, you've obviously managed to unzip the file. That was the hard part! Now drag the addon to (you guessed it) the folder that says Drag here to install! You're done!

Opening: [top]

Right click on the Tracker, Select Add-Ons, Then Select ReName.
Press <ALT>-<OPT>-<SHORTCUT KEY> where <SHORTCUT KEY> is R by default, but can be changed by simply renaming the Add-On to ReName-<NEW SHORTCUT KEY>.

Use: [top]

There are now two ways to use ReName!

Select the entries that you want to rename and open ReName!

Open ReName!, then select the entries you want to rename, and drag them onto ReName!

Change Basename is checked. [top]

If multiple files were selected, when you hit the ReName! button, the entry names will be changed to whatever you had in the basename field plus a number. If the entry had an extension previous to this, it will have the same extension after this.
If only a single file was selected, you will get whatever you typed in the basename field plus whatever extension it had before (if it had one).
HINT: If you leave the basename empty in this mode, your files will have names like 001.ext,002.ext,etc.
HINT: You can now use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character. ReName! will replace all occurences of * with the original basename. This allows for easy prefixing and postfixing of strings to a basename.

Change Extension is checked. [top]

This mode leaves the basename alone. If you have two files with the same basename and different extensions, the operation will succeed for the first file, but issue an alert for the second file. The alert allows you kill the first file by "ReName Anyway!" or "Don't Do It!" for THAT FILE ONLY! HINT: If you want to get rid of the extensions on some files you brought over from that other OS, use this mode, and leave the Extension field blank.

Change Case is checked. [top]

This is a modifier to the current mode. When Change case is checked, it doesn't matter what case you typed the basename and/or extension in, the entire filename will be in UPPER case, lower case, or Capitalize Each Word depending on your choice. A note on Capitalize Each Word: The following characters are considered for breaking words:

space [ ]

underscore [_]

parens [(,)]

less than & greater than [<,>]

brackets [[,]]

braces [{,}]

ampersand [&]

dash [-]

comma [,]

If a "word" begins with "Mc" then it will be capitalized as such. The same cannot be done with "Mac" because of words like "Machine". Because ReName! splits filenames into basename + extension on the LAST "." in the name a file with a name like "jason a. burgess" will end up looking like "Jason A. burgess". There currently is no desirable workaround other than manually fixing the few files this applies to.

Search & Replace is checked. [top]

This is a modifier to the current mode. When Search & Replace is checked, it searchs for the text in the search box and replaces it with the text in the replace box. This is applied last and IS case sensitive.

Definitions: [top]

Basename: The part of an entry's name that preceeds the last '.'
Extension: The part of an entry's name following the last '.'
Entry: A file or directory.