Re: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates

jcb beat me to the point about collisions from different users. (Edit: it's late here and I got things reversed in my head. No need for the reverse for the sort.) Here is a simple solution that works except it will clobber any collisions between users with the user with the ~~lowest~~ highest number. This solution takes a ~~reverse~~ sort of the filenames and then uses File::Copy::move to rename them so that the newest collision file is the last one to be renamed. If you specify what to do by user collisions this could be modified to watch for the user number.

Perl has a built in rename function but the documentation suggests using File::Copy::move since it is more portable across operating systems.

use warnings;
use strict;
use File::Copy;
use File::Glob ':glob';

mkdir 'test' unless -d 'test';

#foreach( reverse sort glob( "*_Table_*.pdf" ) ){
foreach( sort glob( "*_Table_*.pdf" ) ){
    print "$_\n";
    my $newname = $_;
    $newname =~ s/^[0-9_]+//;
    print "--$newname\n";
    ## using copy for testing.
    copy $_, "./test/$newname" or print "Error copying <$_> $!\n";
    #move $_, "$newname" or print "Error renaming <$_> $!\n";
}

__DATA__
test files:
8_2007_5_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
8_2007_5_22_22_34_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
7_2007_5_22_16_35_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
7_2007_5_22_23_36_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf

output file:
Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
[download]

Edit: I forgot to add the program output. Also, I had an extra file in my test files.

8_2007_5_22_22_34_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf --Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf 8_2007_5_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf --Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf 7_2007_5_22_22_34_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf --Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf 7_2007_5_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf --Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf 7_2007_12_22_15_34_23_Table_-_20071222_XYZ_W3.pdf --Table_-_20071222_XYZ_W3.pdf
[download]

Edit: updated output without reverse sort.

7_2007_12_22_15_34_23_Table_-_20071222_XYZ_W3.pdf
--Table_-_20071222_XYZ_W3.pdf
7_2007_5_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
--Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
7_2007_5_22_22_34_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
--Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
8_2007_5_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
--Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
8_2007_5_22_22_34_12_Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
--Table_-_2007522_XYZ_W3.pdf
[download]

Comment on Re: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates Select or Download Code

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Re^2: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates by haukex (Archbishop) on Nov 06, 2019 at 08:13 UTC
`sort glob( "_Table_.pdf" )` Unfortunately that doesn't work because it'll incorrectly sort a later datetime of e.g. `2007_10_22_15_34_23` before `2007_9_22_15_34_23`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates by Lotus1 (Vicar) on Nov 06, 2019 at 16:32 UTC
I thought of that and wish now I had mentioned it in my writeup. There is no chance of a name collision in that example since the year, month and day are repeated in the new name. For example: `8_2007_10_22_15_34_23_Table_-_20071022_XYZ_W3.pdf 8_2007_9_22_15_34_23_Table_-_2007922_XYZ_W3.pdf` [download] The new filenames for these two will be: `Table_-_20071022_XYZ_W3.pdf Table_-_2007922_XYZ_W3.pdf` [download] Having the sorting correct only matters among the filenames that start with the same YYYY?MDD dates. The HH_mm_ss format seems to be consistent and therefore sortable with the default sort. I'm assuming that from the limited example data we were given.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates by haukex (Archbishop) on Nov 06, 2019 at 16:39 UTC
The HH_mm_ss format seems to be consistent It seems not, given one of the datetimes shown in the OP is `'2019-6-12T22:34:8'`. There is no chance of a name collision in that example since the year, month and day are repeated in the new name. IMHO that's also a very dangerous assumption to make.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates by Lotus1 (Vicar) on Nov 06, 2019 at 17:27 UTC
Re^6: Batch file renaming - on identical name, keep only most recent file, based on dates by haukex (Archbishop) on Nov 06, 2019 at 18:15 UTC
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