topic Re: Renaming Multiple Files at Once in SAS Programming

Renaming Multiple Files at Once

mollywilk — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:40:03 GMT

Hey! I need a SAS program that will rename multiple files at once. Currently the files are names “blah_blah_person.pdf” and I need to update the files to “blah_blah_person_2023.pdf”. Is there a way to do this in SAS?

Please note that “blah_blah_person” is different for each file, it’s not a consistent name for each. And each file is located in a folder on my windows computer.

Re: Renaming Multiple Files at Once

Tom — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:54:22 GMT

just use TRANWRD().

data have;
  input oldname $200;
cards;
blah_blah_person.pdf
;

data want;
  set have;
   length newname $200;
   newname=tranwrd(oldname,'.pdf ','_2023.pdf');
run;

Now that you have both names you can use them to generate RENAME commands.

Re: Renaming Multiple Files at Once

mollywilk — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 14:10:46 GMT

Would the rename all of the files in the folder at once?

Re: Renaming Multiple Files at Once

Tom — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 14:25:02 GMT

@mollywilk wrote:
Would the rename all of the files in the folder at once?

To rename a series of files you need to:

1) Get the names of the files.

2) Generate the new name you want it to have.

3) Issue a rename command for each file.

What part of that are you having trouble with?

What have you tried?

How can you get a list of the files? (Hint that question has been asked hundreds of times on this site).

I showed you how to generate a new name.

How can you rename one file? What command can you use? What would you do if it was just one file you had to rename?