Value of $O parameter in RENAME
I have recently needed the $O parameter (extension) in a Rename template. I wonld up with quite a few files with to periods in front of the extention, which were a bit of a pain to fix. Nowhere in the Help file does it warn you that the value of $O includes the period before the extention.
I have two requests. 1), the this be made blinding ly clear in the discription in the Help page, 2) that a alternative paramter be provided which has at its value the extension without the leading period.
There is a clear warning that the Rename original function, which is what I presume you used, is for Advanced users only and At your own risk. If you have any doubts at all about the result of the operation you should always do a test run first, copying the files to another folder so that you still retain the originals. You probably know that by now though.
It is just not possible to warn about everything that might be done wrong in something as powerful as Batch. IMHO it is not unreasonable to expect the User to guess that, in this case, Extension does include the dot. I cannot think why anyone would want it without the dot actually. Presumably you can since you are asking for that in 2)
However it would have been very easy to put right the mistake by performing another Batch rename operation, setting the original file name ($F) as the name pattern and Replace .. with .
If the incorrectly renamed files are scattered in many folders, then find them all using the Irfanview Search function, setting *..* as the search pattern. Having found them press Show in Thumbnails.
Select all the thumbnails that you want to rename, right click on one of them and choose Start batch dialog with selected files.
Us old programmers are too stubborn to read a manual. Well, skim one, but not read. I could make up a reason to want the extension without the period, but I've always thought of the period as the punctuation the separates the name form the extension it never dawned on me that it would be dragged along. After all, you talk about "exe" or "avi" files, not "dot-exe" or "dot-avi". Or maybe I'm the only one who doesn't?
First, I already "reversed [my] deed", albeit using a different program. Second, I think Mij and I are talking past each other. He tells me that I should experiment if"have any doubts". I would have, but I mistakenly assumed constancy in the documentation. If the period is part of the extension, then files would be referred to as .jpg files, but (check the index) they are not. Perhaps there is a language barrier, or perhaps there is an inconsistency, I don't know which. Of course, it is Windows were are talking about, and I have yet to see a formal grammar for file naming. My assumption has always been that the "extension" is the alphanumeric string following the last period (dot, full-stop, what ever you wish to call it) in the file name, and that that period is a delimiter. One might argue that since $N has a value of "filename without extension" and does not have a trailing period in it's value that the period is part of the extension, but if that is true than all the instances of "jpg", "tif", "mp3", etc. and so forth in the rest of the documentation should be spelled with the seemingly requisite leading period.
This reminds me of discussions I used to have with people about file structures. I spent my working life (1958 to 1991) using IBM computers, where, generally file structure was external to the data. I always though of it as the punched-card model. The data could contain any character. But many other computing systems used the punch-paper-tape model, where one was limited as the characters used in the data, because the structure was delimited by "control characters". We never convinced each other that we were right, but I still think it is pretty shoddy to exclude certain bit patterns form the allowable data.
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