C++20 STL Cookbook/

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Rename Files with Regex and directory_iterator

Rename Files with Regex and directory_iterator

Learn to rename files with regex and directory_iterator.

We'll cover the following...

This is a simple utility that renames files using regular expressions. It uses directory_iterator to find the files in a directory and fs::rename() to rename them.

How to do it

In this recipe, we create a file rename utility that uses regular expressions:

  • We start by defining a few convenience aliases:

namespace fs = std::filesystem;
using dit = fs::directory_iterator;
using pat_v = vector<std::pair<regex, string>>;

The pat_v alias is a vector for use with our regular expressions.

  • We also continue to use the formatter specialization for path objects:

template<>
struct std::formatter<fs::path>: std::formatter<std::string> {
    template<typename FormatContext>
    auto format(const fs::path& p, FormatContext& ctx) {
        return format_to(ctx.out(), "{}", p.string());
    }
};

  • We have a function for applying the regular expression ...