Am I tackling this directory renaming problem correctly?

To better understand the problem I created a dummy directory (path) with a few dummy files (name). (Note: your datetime import is unused)

Your username parsing line is wrong. You can test it out on the string "kennethlove2-2012-04-29.txt" and you'll get zero matches. I found it was easier to use regex just for the date. Slicing is a much simpler way to find the extension and then the username.

Here's my working code, read all the comments:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
@author: Frederik Bussler
"""

import datetime
import os
import re

# Filenames consist of a username (alphanumeric, 3-12 characters)
# and a date (four digit year, two digit month, two digit day),
# and an extension. They should end up in the format
# year-month-day-username.extension.

# Example: kennethlove2-2012-04-29.txt becomes 2012-04-29-kennethlove2.txt

def cleanup(path):
    for name in os.listdir(path):
        # find the date in the pre-formatted file name
        orig_date = re.search(r'\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}', name)
        # format the date correctly
        formatted_date = datetime.datetime.strptime(orig_date.group(), '%Y-%m-%d').date()
        # the file extension is the last 4 characters (i.e. .txt)
        ext = str(name[-4:])
        # concatenate new string as date with a dash plus username plus extension
        # username is found by slicing name up to index of dash (start of date)
        new_str = str(formatted_date) + "-" + str(name[:name.index('-')]) + ext
        # rename files, make sure to join path with file name 
        os.rename(os.path.join(path, name), os.path.join(path, new_str))

Hi all!

Could you please let me know what is wrong with the following code (tested locally and worked but it won't work in the challenge):

import os

def cleanup(path):
    cdir = os.listdir(path)
    for f in cdir:
        name, ext = os.path.splitext(f)
        pseudo = name[0:-11:1]
        date = name[-1:13:-1][::-1] + '-'
        os.replace(f, date + pseudo + ext)

Thank you

Things of note regarding this challenge:

• The dates are indeed in YYYY-MM-DD format. If Kenneth had tried to trick you by including variants such as DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY, there wouldn't be any way for you to tell the difference between the formats. Case in point 12-11-2017 is valid for both variants I mentioned.
• Using the RE library is allowed and worked for me.
  • Here's a Python Regex cheatsheet if you need one.

TIP: Try and test your code using your terminal emulator (command line) and your actual file system.

• Create a directory, you can delete it later.
  

• Fill it with variations of both the correct and incorrect formatting.

  • You could do this with the following script:

  files = ['2012-04-29-kennethlove2.txt', 'kennethlove2-2012-04-29.txt', 
         'philip34king-1312-12-05.zip', 'osk18ear55-2354-12-08.jpeg']
  for a_file in files:
      os.system('touch {}'.format(a_file))
  

• Provide the path to that directory as the argument for the cleanup function.

• I'll leave the rest up to you...

I hate to say it, but Kenneth is really starting to annoy me big time!!! He's so confusing and I think he forgets some of us aren't like him. Anyway, here's my attempt: def cleanup(path): cdir = os.listdir(path) for f in cdir: name, ext = os.path.splitext(f) pseudo = name[0:-11:1] date = name[-1:13:-1][::-1] + '-' os.replace(f, date + pseudo + ext) So what's wrong with it???

def cleanup(path): cdir = os.listdir(path) for f in cdir: name, ext = os.path.splitext(f) pseudo = name[0:-11:1] date = name[-1:13:-1][::-1] + '-' os.replace(f, date + pseudo + ext)

files = ['2012-04-29-kennethlove2.txt', 'kennethlove2-2012-04-29.txt', 'philip34king-1312-12-05.zip', 'osk18ear55-2354-12-08.jpeg'] for a_file in files: os.system('touch {}'.format(a_file))files = ['2012-04-29-kennethlove2.txt', 'kennethlove2-2012-04-29.txt', 'philip34king-1312-12-05.zip', 'osk18ear55-2354-12-08.jpeg']

HELP ME!