Python – Need help renaming all pdf in a folder based on 2 criteria

Question

I am very new to programing, and I am trying to strengthen my Python skills via unique problems I find at my job. Currently, I have a program that is exporting PDFs from a remote desktop and it is automatically lowercasing all of the letters in the filename. We use two different item code formats, so I need to come up with a way to rename them all at once so that I can run a script periodically to fix this issue and gain my sanity back. I will provide examples of what I have, and what I want to convert the names to below:

Materials

4000a example material test
4000A Example Material Test

Finished Products

test-2000a-tp-a example finished product
TEST-2000A-TP-A Example Finished Product

I am not sure how to best do this, but you can see exactly which positions I want to capitalize based on these formats. The materials one should be easier, the finished product one will take a little more creativity probably. I have looked around on here, Github, and a few other places…and I like this framework from GitHub but I can’t figure out how to write the code for the renaming of the above examples. I have both types in the same folder, so I would like to have a script that does both and uses the try/except, and the confirmation of change so that I can prevent mistakes and learn to write better code.

Here is the code that I have now, with the section I need help on shown in comments:

import os

folder = '/Dev/Test_Rename_PDF'

for fileName in os.listdir('.'):
    try:
        # Find all PDF (all of them are, but I wanted a more diverse script for future uses)
        if fileName.lower()[-3:] != "pdf":
            continue
        print("Processing " + fileName)
        
        # Uppercase based on the two conditions I provided above.
        # (NEED HELP HERE)

        # Ask user for confirmation to change
        option = raw_input("Do you want to rename '" + fileName + "'' to '" + newName + "'? [y][n]: ")
        option = option.lower()

        # Change if approved
        if(option.startswith('y')):
            os.rename(fileName, newName)

    except:
        print("Error in processing: " + fileName)

I’m trying my best to learn by doing with Python right now, and I know I probably have other mistakes, but I am doing my best and taking online classes as I have time. I appreciate your time!

Asked By: dr_jack3l

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Source

Answer 1

This will work for both examples. I’ve tried to outline each step with a variable so you can look at all the intermediate steps.

filename = "test-2000a-tp-a example finished product"

# Split into list of words separated by space character
word_list = filename.split()

# Look at each individual word
# If the word has a -, then change it to all uppercase
# If not, just capitalize first letter
capitalized_word_list = [
    word.upper() if "-" in word else word.capitalize() for word in word_list
]

# Rebuild the filename by joining the word list with a space inbetween each word
capitalized_filename = " ".join(capitalized_word_list)

print(capitalized_filename)

Answered By: Michael Cao

Python – Need help renaming all pdf in a folder based on 2 criteria

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