This is the built-in help made by Microsoft for the command 'Rename-Item', in PowerShell version 3 - as retrieved from
Windows version 'Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard' PowerShell help files on 2016-06-23.
For PowerShell version 3 and up, where you have Update-Help, this command was run just before creating the web pages from the help files.
Renames an item in a Windows PowerShell provider namespace.
Rename-Item [-Path] <String> [-NewName] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] [-Force] [-PassThru] [-Confirm] [-WhatIf] [-UseTransaction
[<SwitchParameter>]] [<CommonParameters>]
Rename-Item [-NewName] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] [-Force] [-PassThru] -LiteralPath <String> [-Confirm] [-WhatIf] [-UseTransaction
[<SwitchParameter>]] [<CommonParameters>]
The Rename-Item cmdlet changes the name of a specified item. This cmdlet does not affect the content of the item being renamed.
You cannot use Rename-Item to move an item, such as by specifying a path along with the new name. To move and rename an item, use the
Move-Item cmdlet.
<
Online Version: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=113382
Clear-Item
Copy-Item
Get-Item
Invoke-Item
Move-Item
New-Item
Remove-Item
Rename-ItemProperty
Set-Item
about_Providers
<
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 1 --------------------------
PS C:\>rename-item -path c:\logfiles\daily_file.txt -newname monday_file.txt
This command renames the file daily_file.txt to monday_file.txt.
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 2 --------------------------
PS C:\>rename-item -path project.txt -newname d:\archive\old-project.txt
Rename-Item : Cannot rename because the target specified represents a path or device name.
At line:1 char:12
+ rename-item <<<< -path project.txt -newname d:\archive\old-project.txt
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Rename-Item], PSArgumentException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Argument,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RenameItemCommand
PS C:\>move-item -path project.txt -destination d:\archive\old-project.txt
# Command succeeds
This example shows that you cannot use the Rename-Item cmdlet to both rename and move an item. Specifically, you cannot supply a path for the
value of the NewName parameter, unless the path is identical to the path specified in the Path parameter. Otherwise, only a new name is
permitted.
The first command uses the Rename-Item cmdlet to rename the project.txt file in the current directory to old-project.txt in the D:\Archive
directory. The result is the error shown in the output.
The second command shows the correct way to move and rename a file by using the Move-Item cmdlet. The Move-Item cmdlet lets you specify both a
new path and a new name in the value of its Destination parameter.
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 3 --------------------------
PS C:\>rename-item HKLM:\Software\MyCompany\Advertising -NewName Marketing
This command uses the Rename-Item cmdlet to rename a registry key from Advertising to Marketing. When the command is complete, the key is
renamed, but the registry entries in the key are unchanged.
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 4 --------------------------
PS C:\>get-childItem *.txt | rename-item -newname { $_.name -replace '\.txt','.log' }
This example shows how to use the Replace operator to rename multiple files, even though the NewName parameter does not accept wildcard
characters.
This command renames all of the .txt files in the current directory to .log.
The command uses a Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get all of the files in the current directory that have a .txt file name extension. Then, it uses
the pipeline operator (|) to send the resulting files to the Rename-Item cmdlet.
In the Rename-Item command, the value of the NewName parameter is a script block that is executed before the value is submitted to the NewName
parameter.
In the script block, the $_ automatic variable represents each file object as it comes to the command through the pipeline. The command uses
the dot format (.) to get the Name property of each file object. The Replace operator replaces the ".txt" file name extension of each file
with ".log".
Because the Replace operator works with regular expressions, the dot preceding "txt" is interpreted to match any character. To ensure that it
matches only a dot (.), it is escaped with a backslash character (\). The backslash character is not required in ".log" because it is a
string, not a regular expression.