Remove extra square brackets from folder names

Question

I have a series of folders, named as follow

[[1254170]][folder1]
[[1212340]][folder2]
[[3245417]][folder3]

I want to rename them all as

[1254170]folder1
[1212340]folder2
[3245417]folder3

or at least

[1254170][folder1]
[1212340][folder2]
[3245417][folder3]

I edited the batch command I learned from a question I asked a year ago.

Get-ChildItem -path . -directory -recurse | Where {$_.Name -match '^\[\[\d\]\]'} | Rename-Item -NewName {$_.Name -replace '^\[\[\d\]\]','^\[\d\]'}

The command went through but nothing happened.

I also tried an edited version of the command from this answer

Get-ChildItem * -Filter "*`[`[*`]`]*" | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace '\[\[','\[' -replace '\]\]','\]' }

and I got this error

Rename-Item : Cannot rename the specified target, because it represents a path or device name.
At line:1 char:41
+ ... `[*`]`]*" | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace '\[\[','\[' -repl ...
+                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Rename-Item], PSArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Argument,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RenameItemCommand

Someone help me please? I am using Windows 11. Thank you.

Answer 1

$path = "D:\test"

Get-ChildItem $path -Filter "`[`[*`]`]`[*`]" -Directory|ForEach{
    Rename-Item -Literal $_.FullName $_.Name.Replace("[[","[").Replace("]]","]")
}

Answer 2

• Use Where-Object with a -match operation to find the folder (directory) names of interest, capturing the substrings of interest via regex capture groups ((...)).

• You can pipe the matching folders to Rename-Item and use a delay-bind script block to dynamically determine the new name, in which you can refer to the captured substrings via the automatic $Matches variable.

  • Inside the delay-bind script block, you can use -f, the string-formatting operator, to synthesize the new name.

Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse |
  Where-Object Name -match '^\[\[(.+?)\]\]\[(.+?)\]$' | 
    Rename-Item -NewName { '[{0}]{1}' -f $Matches[1], $matches[2] } -WhatIf

^{Note: The -WhatIf common parameter in the command above previews the operation. Remove -WhatIf once you're sure the operation will do what you want.}

Answer 3

$testinput = '[[1254170]][folder1]'
$testinput

## catch the string and replace using regex
### replacing the matched string with capture group 2

$testinput -replace '(\[)(.*?)(\])', '${2}'
$testinput


C:\> [1254170]folder1

Regex Explanation

( open capture group 1
 \ escaping the next character
  [ matches [ literally
   ) closing capture group 1

    ( starting capture group 2
     . matching any character except line breaks
      * matches 0 or more of the preceding .
       ? making this lazy to capture as few as possible
        ) closing capture group 2
    
         ( starting capture group 3
          \ escaping the next character
           ] matches ] literally
            ) closing capture group 3

(\[)(.*?)(\])

( [ )( [1254170] )( ] )  ( [ )( folder1 )( ] )
( 1 )(    2      )( 3 )  ( 1 )(    2    )( 3 )
     

Answer 4

The latter [123123][folder1] i got with something like this:

$str = '[[1254170]][folder1]'
$newstr = ($str | select-string '\[[\w-]+\]?').Matches.Value + ($str | select-string '\[[\w-]+\]+$').Matches.Value

$newstr
[1254170][folder1]