Powershell - Rename filename by removing the last few characters

Question

I want to remove the last 11 characters of multiple files names. For example I have these file names:

ABCDE_2015_10_20
HIJKL_2015_10_20
MNOPQ_2015_10_20
RSTU         


        

Answer 1

Just to add to the response from arco444:

Get-ChildItem 'E:\Thomson Reuters\Stage' -filter *.txt | rename-item -NewName {$_.name.substring(0,$_.BaseName.length-6) + $_.Extension -replace "_"," "}

This would rename all .txt files in the directory, remove the last 6 characters of the file name, replace any remaining underscore in the filename with a space but still retain the file extension.

So assuming these were text files you would see something like this:

ABCDE_2015_10_20.txt
HIJKL_2015_10_20.txt
MNOPQ_2015_10_20.txt
RSTUV_2015_10_20.txt

Become this:

ABCDE 2015.txt
HIJKL 2015.txt
MNOPQ 2015.txt
RSTUV 2015.txt

Answer 2

As you want to split the file name at the 1st underscore,

• use the .split() method or -split operator with the zero based index [0].
• rename changing the BaseName and keeping the Extension

---

Get-ChildItem 'E:\Thomson Reuters\Stage' |  
    Rename-Item -NewName { $_.BaseName.Split('_')[0] + $_.Extension }

Answer 3

You're almost there, you just need to tell substring exactly where to start and end:

Get-ChildItem 'E:\Thomson Reuters\Stage' | rename-item -newname { $_.name.substring(0,$_.name.length-11) } 

By passing two integers to substring you give it the StartIndex and Length of the string you want to capture. See here for the documentation