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novoid / appendfilename

Intelligent appending text to file names, considering file extensions and file tags
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Prepend filename command line switch #3

Closed metbril closed 5 years ago

metbril commented 5 years ago

I am trying some of your tools and found a need to prepend some text to the filename. That is, between the date/timestamp and the original filename.

For example the command

appendfilename --prepend --text="Invoice" *.pdf

would change the name of 

2018-11-16 Apple 123456.pdf

to

2018-11-16 Invoice Apple 123456.pdf
novoid commented 5 years ago

Hi @metbril,

I understand your use-case.

I thought about it and unfortunately, I have to decline this feature. And this is why:

First of all, the tool is (somewhat unfortunately in this case) named "appendfilename" which contradicts any prepending feature. If I would have this use-case, I'd probably write a different tool or think about renaming "appendfilename" which I don't for now.

Secondly, if I would add a pre-pending command line switch, I can think of people who wants to have this prepended string before the date/time-stamp. The semantics would suggest so as well. (I know that appending before the tags is a different example that might be mentioned here.)

A personal suggestion for a workaround: When I want to prepend a string to many files, I end up using vidir which can be installed via the Debian package moreutils. It opens the current directory in vim where you can use the column-insert feature to add those prepend-strings. Emacs/dired offers the same feature as well: dired-toggle-read-only. Other file managers should support such a feature but I don't know of any other file manager that provides a good solution for it besides Emacs/dired and vidir.

I hope this helps your use-case for now.

metbril commented 5 years ago

Thanks for your comment. I understand why you don't want to update your tool.

I think I will build a dedicated tool myself (be it python or bash). Would you accept a PR if I should decide to make one?

novoid commented 5 years ago

Hi @metbril,

It's not the implementation effort that made me decide against your proposal - it's the implications of it that made me think. Therefore, I am currently not interested in accepting a PR for it. Sorry. Thanks for your proposal - very kind!