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Nifty FREE Utility to do almost anything to a filename in Windows

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questorfla:
I get so many pieces of great software from everyone here that I wanted to contribute a link to a program that I think has got to fill a very unique need for anyone using Windows.  I am always trying to figure out how to script various functions that were never intended to be done with Windows and unless I load GAWK of GNU or some other better software for file manipulation there never seems to be a way to do these things in Windows.
After many hours of digging though all the places i have never heard of before I ran across this little GEM of a tool called 1-4aRename and thought i  would post the link herein case it might be of use to others.
My need was to be able to truncate all filenames in a folder by 12 characters without chopping off the extension.  This was due to a file creation setup in a backup utility where they did not provide for any other alternatives.  The 12 characters (which i did not need and were causing a problem with further processing) i just needed to chop off the end of the name.  
After testing at least a dozen versions of awk, sed, (and even rename which failed for some reason) I ran across this tool and was amazed to see that it not only worked as needed but would allow you to preview the changes before they were applied as well as undoing them afterward.

This may be something only someone like me would ever need but the utility is Free, has no strings attached (that I could find), included no junk-ware or other trash and just worked perfectly.
If you get it, be sure to try the advanced mode (click F2) as that is when things got really amazing. :Thmbsup:
I hope it is of use to someone else as well.

x16wda:
Very cool! I have used Bulk Rename Utility for this sort of thing, but I am always glad to find another!

TaoPhoenix:

Does it rename those "nearly impossible" files? There was that thread a few weeks ago with the one that resisted like seven of the usual tricks.

Giampy:
With regard to utilities: I select some files in Windows Explorer, and I wonder how it's possible to pass their names to a Dos command...

MilesAhead:
With regard to utilities: I select some files in Windows Explorer, and I wonder how it's possible to pass their names to a Dos command...


-Giampy (June 18, 2015, 09:46 AM)
--- End quote ---

From XP SP3 and later you would type the command, leave a space, then drag and drop onto the command window.  The names would be pasted in.  Something that might work better would be a .cmd batch file.  You could drag and drop to a shortcut of the batch file or put a shortcut to the batch in SendTo folder.  Select files, right click, Send To then lift click the batch shortcut.

The batch file could be simple like

--- ---@echo off
:next
if "%1"="" goto end
copy "%1" d:\somefolder
shift
goto next
:end

or whatever

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