PowerShell Batch rename.item $_ fails, "Could not find item"

Question

I'm trying out a rename-item command I found on YouTube to remove leading underscores in some very long file names, but I get a "Could not find item" error and no net changes.

Here's the initial command:

get-childitem *jpg | foreach {rename-item $_ $_.name.replace("__","")}

And here's the response in PowerShell:

The hoped-for result was a folder full of renamed JPG files with the leading __ underscore characters removed from the file names.

I'm not sure if PowerShell has trouble handling double underscores, if the file path + name is too long, or if there's a format error in the command. Suggestions welcome.

Answer 1

• Indeed, as the comments point out, it is both more robust and more efficient to pipe directly to Rename-Item and to use a delay-bind script block to determine the new file name.

• However, in your case the primary problem seems to be that the file's path is too long:

  • In Windows PowerShell, you need the long-path support opt-in prefix (\\?\) to target paths that exceed 259 characters in length.

    • The alternative is to configure your system to support long paths by default - see this answer for details.

    • In the absence of long-path support, the error message you get is misleading, as it mistakenly suggests that an offending file doesn't exist (and, ironically, prints its full path as part of the error message).

  • Note that this no longer necessary in PowerShell (Core) 7+, which unconditionally enables this support for itself.

Therefore, use the following, which explicitly targets the current location (directory) via the automatic $PWD variable and prepends \\?\, and also uses the delay-bind script-block technique.

# NOTE: The \\?\ workaround is no longer needed in PowerShell 7+
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath "\\?\$($PWD.ProviderPath)" -Filter *jpg | 
  Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.Replace('__', '') }