Can You Append a File Name to .txt Files with Windows cmd?

[feynman1]

For 1 given .txt file, how to append its file name into the main contents of this .txt file? For all .txt files in a directory, how to append the file name into the main contents of each .txt file?

 

[Melbourne Guy]

Operating system?

It's trivial in Unix, something like:

#!/bin/sh

for FILE in $HOME/*.txt
do
   echo $FILE >> $FILE
done

Should do the job, noting that I've not actually fired up my Linux laptop to test this

 

[feynman1]

thanks, but how about in windows

 

[Melbourne Guy]

You can write a similar Batch file script, but of course DOS uses different commands:

FOR %y IN (.\*.txt) DO @ECHO %y >> %y

With an even bigger note that my DOS batch file skills are rudimentary but hopefully this points you in the right direction, @feynman1.

 

[feynman1]

You can write a similar Batch file script, but of course DOS uses different commands:

FOR %y IN (.\*.txt) DO @ECHO %y >> %y

With an even bigger note that my DOS batch file skills are rudimentary but hopefully this points you in the right direction, @feynman1.

thanks that's cool! But how can I get rid of suffix .txt?

 

[Melbourne Guy]

In Windows? Sorry, @feynman1, there isn't an inline regex routine to do that I'm aware of outside of PowerShell or within VBS and that's not straightforward. For example, your PC might need policy edits to run PowerShell.

In Unix, you'd just pipe it through sed, and there are a lot of equivalents to sed (and complete Unix-like wrappers), but they require that you download packages to your computer...and you need to know how to use Unix commands.

Within a DOS batch file, the FOR loop could be used to try:

1. Set a variable to the current filename in the FOR loop
2. RENAME to change the filename and strip off the .txt extension
3. ECHO the filename
4. RENAME the file to the original .txt filename using the variable you set in Step #1

It's pretty complicated, though, and my DOS BATCH skills are really rusty

 

[feynman1]

who can help me get rid of inputting '.txt' into the .txt file

 

[Melbourne Guy]

who can help me get rid of inputting '.txt' into the .txt file

This can work as a DOS BATCH file, though it helps to run it in a directory with only the .txt files you want to edit, otherwise the second RENAME will pick up extraneous files.

rename *.txt *.
FOR %%f IN (*.) DO (
ECHO %%f >> %%f
RENAME "%%f" "%%f".txt
)

 

[feynman1]

This can work as a DOS BATCH file, though it helps to run it in a directory with only the .txt files you want to edit, otherwise the second RENAME will pick up extraneous files.

rename *.txt *.
FOR %%f IN (*.) DO (
ECHO %%f >> %%f
RENAME "%%f" "%%f".txt
)

oh that works, thanks! so I just need to clear all non txt files.

 

[bigfooted]

If you do this kind of work more often, it is worthwhile to have linux and its tools available. You could install it in a virtual box and run it in a window inside MS windows if you do not want to bother with a dual boot system.

You also have regex available in python, so alternatively you can install anaconda in windows and run similar commands from e.g. a jupyter notebook. This is maybe the easiest approach.

 

[feynman1]

If you do this kind of work more often, it is worthwhile to have linux and its tools available. You could install it in a virtual box and run it in a window inside MS windows if you do not want to bother with a dual boot system.

You also have regex available in python, so alternatively you can install anaconda in windows and run similar commands from e.g. a jupyter notebook. This is maybe the easiest approach.

Thanks but how to do it in anaconda/jupyter in windows?

 

[pbuk]

If you do this kind of work more often, it is worthwhile to have linux and its tools available. You could install it in a virtual box and run it in a window inside MS windows if you do not want to bother with a dual boot system.

Accessing the windows filesystem from inside a VM is not trivial so I wouldn't recommend this. It's easier from a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installation though. However neither of these are as easy as your next suggestion, which would be my recommendation.

You also have regex available in python, so alternatively you can install anaconda in windows and run similar commands from e.g. a jupyter notebook. This is maybe the easiest approach.

Or if you are more familiar with another scripting language (e.g. Node.js or even PHP) then this would be the easiest route.

Thanks but how to do it in anaconda/jupyter in windows?

Using the file methods. It is usually easier in Windows because you don't have to worry so much about user permissions (in Linux the Jupyter kernel may not be running with the right permissions to modify the files you want).

 

[bigfooted]

Install anaconda:
https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual
Anaconda is a data science platform that offers jupyter notebook (or jupyter labs). You can then use that to do some python programming:
https://www.dataquest.io/blog/jupyter-notebook-tutorial/
and then read the introduction to python:
https://www.w3schools.com/python/
And then you are ready for some regex:
https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_regex.asp

you can do something like this to get a list of all .txt files:

import glob
filelist = glob.glob(r'c:\myDocuments\*.txt')

You then have a list of filenames. There are many options to strip the extension, but here is one to strip the extension of the first entry in the list using regex:

import re
re.sub('\.txt$', '', filelist[0])

I hope this will get you started in the right direction.

 

[Eclair_de_XII]

For future reference, there's a website dedicated to how to use the Windows cmd and other terminals:

https://ss64.com/nt/syntax.html