Change Date Format - No Delimiter

Hi,

I had read few posts about changing date format. However most have delimiter such as 21.07.2023.

My files do not have delimiter, so it appears as ESE17170723081002127081180723. I would like to change the last 6 digits to the following:

230718
2023-07-18 (year-month-date)
2023-07 (year-month)
23-07 (year-month)
2307 (year-month)

Thank you.

Reply to #1:

Hi Henry,

Actually you do have a delimiter, the end of filename. In regex that's "$". So all you need is to separate the two-digit sections of the date and (in regex terms) anchor it with the end-of-filename code. In a replace method it would look like:

Text to replace: (\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)$
(no spaces)
Replace with: 20$3-$2-$1
(no spaces)
Regex ON
Apply to: Name

Leave the dashes out if you don't want them, and leave off $1 if you don't want the day number. You were a little unclear about what format you actually wanted to end up with.

You also didn't say if the month and day are always zero-padded, but I'm assuming you would have mentioned it if they weren't. You also didn't say where in the filename you want the date to end up; the regex above will leave it at the end. If you want it at the beginning:

Text to replace: (.*)(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)$
(no spaces)
Replace with: 20$4-$3-$2_$1
(no spaces)
Regex ON
(I used an underscore to separate the date, but you could use whatever, or nothing)

Let us know if that's not what you were asking for. :)

Best,
DF

Reply to #2:
Ahh, okok.

I tried it on my own and had to replace the first 23 characters with the value 20. LOL.

Managed to figure out about swapping.


Thanks once again.

Reply to #3:

Yeah, that sounds tedious. If all your filenames are 23 characters plus the date, that in itself is a delimiter that you could use, like this (again, putting the date at the start):

TTR: (.{23})(..)(..)(..)
RW: 20$4$3$2_$1

Anyway, just another way to thread the needle...

Cheers!