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powershellleading-zero

Remove leading Zero from file names with Powershell


Good morning.

I am having trouble understanding past topics. I am a new user with minimal understanding.

My file path that I would like to remove all leading zeros from the file names in it is this.

CD Documents\Attachments

Basically what I want to do is copy paste that file path into Powershell then copy paste a command to remove all leading zeroes from the file names in that folder.

and example of the file name would be 0123456789xxxxxxxxxx (length and characters vary)

I would like 123456789xxxxxx

Any help is greatly appreciated.


Solution

  • As Lee_Dailey comments, you can use the TrimStart() method to trim leading characters off a string:

    # Change location to the folder
    cd Documents\Attachments
    
    # Discover all the files in the current folder with leading 0s in their name
    $files = Get-ChildItem -File -Filter 0*
    
    # Use `Rename-Item` with `TrimStart` to rename the files to the appropriate name without the leading 0s
    $files |Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.TrimStart('0') }