file-shuffler

This is a CLI tool that does one thing: shuffles all files in a directory. It does this by prepending all file names in a directory with a random sequential number.

Installation

First, you'll need to install Node JS v8 or newer. Then install this package globally:

npm i -g file-shuffler

Usage

The CLI tool is accessed via the shuffle command. By default, the current directory is used to search for files to shuffle.

You can run shuffle more than once in the same directory and files will be re-shuffled without adding duplicate prefixes.

E.g.:

Before      | After
------------|-------------
five.txt    | 3__five.txt
four.txt    | 2__four.txt
one.txt     | 4__one.txt
three.txt   | 1__three.txt
two.txt     | 5__two.txt

If the number of files in a directory falls into multiple digits, the number prefixes will be zero-padded (e.g., 05, 0017, etc).

shuffle ./my/dir

Calling shuffle followed by the name of a directory will target that folder to search for files inside. This can be absolute or relative.

shuffle -e "txt" or shuffle --extension "txt"

Shuffles only files with a particular extension, ignoring all other files in the directory.

shuffle -s "--" or shuffle --separator "--"

Specify a character (or characters) to use as a separator between the prefix number and the rest of the file name.

E.g.: shuffle -s "@@@" would result in files looking like: 5@@@filename.txt.

shuffle --dry

Dry run mode, useful to see which files would be renamed without actually renaming any. Good to run once before running shuffle.

shuffle --forceShuffle

Usually, shuffle will detect existing number and separator prefixes in files and will replace those prefixes with new ones. If --forceShuffle is provided, existing prefixes won't be detected and a new prefix will always be added. This will result in stacked/duplicated prefixes if ran multiple times.

shuffle --debug

Runs in normal shuffle mode with extra logging.