MATLAB: Renaming files using MATLAB

Question

How can I rename files on my computer using MATLAB?

I have many files on my computer and want to use MATLAB to rename them all at once.

Answer 1

From MATLAB, you can use the "movefile" function to rename files on your machine:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/movefile.html

For more information on managing files and folders in MATLAB see this documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/matlab_env/manage-files-and-folders.html

Alternatively, you can use the "system" command which executes on the local operating system.

On Windows using CMD, the "rename" command works like this:

C:> rename  file_path  new_name
C:> rename  C:\Temp\file1.txt file2.txt

So in MATLAB, from the directory with the file you could execute:

>> system("rename " + "old_name.txt" + " " + "new_name.txt")

If the file names contain spaces, this can confuse the operating system, so a more robust approach is to wrap each file name in double quotes like this:

>> system("rename " + '"' + "old name.txt" + '" "' + "new name.txt" + '"')

This produces a system command like this:

C:> rename "old name.txt" "new name.txt"

To use MATLAB variables for the old and new file names you can use these MATLAB commands:

>> old_path_to_file = "C:\Temp\test a.txt";

>> new_filename = "test b.txt";

>> cmd = "rename " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';

>> system(cmd);

On a Linux or macOS (Unix) system, this would be:

>> old_path_to_file = "/tmp/test a.txt";
>> new_filename = "test b.txt";
>> cmd = "mv " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';
>> system(cmd);