or

RENAME [/= /A:[[-][+]rhsadecijopt] /E /I"text" /N[enst] /O:[-]acdeginorstuz /P /Q /S /T] [@file] old_name... new_name

 

 

/N (Disable)

 

See also: COPY and MOVE.

 

File Selection:

 

Supports command dialog, attribute switches, extended wildcards, ranges, multiple file names, delayed variable expansion, and include lists. Use wildcards with caution on LFN volumes; see LFN File Searches for details.

 

Internet:  Can be used with FTP/HTTP Servers and HTTP/HTTPS servers.

 

Usage:

 

REN and RENAME are synonyms. You may use either one. If you don't specify any arguments, REN will display its command dialog.

 

REN lets you change the name of a file or a subdirectory, or move one or more files to a new subdirectory on the same drive. New files may be on different file systems or drives; new directories must be on the same drive.

 

In its simplest form, you give REN the old_name of an existing file or subdirectory and then a new_name. The new_name must not already exist; you can't give two files the same name (unless they are in different directories). The first example renames the file MEMO.TXT to MEM.TXT. The second example changes the name of the \WORD directory to \WP:

 

rename memo.txt mem.txt

rename /s \word \wp

 

When you rename files or directories on an LFN drive, you must quote any names which contain white space or special characters.

 

You can also use REN to rename a group of files that you specify with wildcards, as multiple files, or in an include list. When you do, the new_name must use one or more wildcards to show what part of each filename to change. Both of the next two examples change the extensions of multiple files to .SAV:

 

ren config.nt autoexec.nt tcstart.btm *.sav

ren *.txt *.sav

 

REN can move files to a different subdirectory on the same drive. When it is used for this purpose, REN requires one or more filenames for the old_name and a directory name for the new_name:

 

ren memo.txt \wp\memos\

ren oct.dat nov.dat \data\save\

 

The final backslash in the last two examples is optional. If you use it, you force REN to recognize the last parameter as the name of a directory, not a file. The advantage of this approach is that if you accidentally mistype the directory name, REN will report an error instead of renaming your files in a way that you didn't intend.

 

REN can also move files to a new directory and change their name at the same time if you specify both a path and file name for new_name. In this example, the files are renamed with an extension of .SAV as they are moved to a new directory:

 

ren *.dat \data\save\*.sav

 

If you use REN to rename a directory, the new_name must normally be specified explicitly, and cannot contain wildcards. You can override this restriction with /S. When you rename a directory the extended directory search database will be automatically updated to reflect the change.

 

You can also rename a subdirectory to a new location in the directory tree on the same physical drive (sometimes called "prune and graft"). You must specify the new name explicitly, not just give the path. For example, if the D:\TCMD directory contains a subdirectory TEST, you can rename TEST to be a subdirectory of the root directory like this:

 

[d:\tcmd] ren TEST \TEST\

 

REN does not change a file's attributes, except to set attribute A. The new_name file(s) will have the same attributes as old_name.

 

If you have appropriate permissions, you can rename files on FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS servers. For example:

 

ren ftp://ftp.abc.com/file1.txt file2.txt

 

Wildcard characters like [*] and [?] will be treated as wildcards in FTP URLs, but will be treated as normal characters in HTTP URLs.

 

You can also use the IFTP command to start an FTP session on a server, and then use an abbreviated syntax to specify the files and directories you want. For more information, see Using FTP/HTTP Servers and IFTP.

 

REN supports regular expression back references in the target name. If you are using back references, you must also use a regular expression in the source name. The syntax is:

 

ren ::filename ::target

 

REN sets three internal variables:

 

 

Note: The wildcard expansion process will attempt to allow both CMD-style "extension" matching (assumes only one extension, at the end of the word) and the advanced TCC string matching (allowing things like *.*.abc) when an asterisk is encountered in the destination of a REN command.

 

Options:

 

 

 

You can specify /A:= to display a dialog to help you set individual attributes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A /N with one or more of the following arguments has an alternate meaning:

 

 

 

You may use any combination of the sorting options below. If multiple options are used, the listing will be sorted with the first sort option as the primary key, the next as the secondary key, and so on:

 

 

The /O:... option saves all of the matching filenames and then performs the rename. This avoids the potential problem of renaming files more than once.