Renaming Files

INSTRUCTOR NOTE:

Helpful Links

1) How to use for loops in Python

2) How to use the translate function in Python

More information on the string function translate

Let us understand the documentation for string.translate

In the python documentation for string translate, you will see

string.translate(s, table[, deletechars])

Notice that there are three argments (or inputs to the
function), s, table, and the optional deletechars (we know it's
optional because it's in square brackets). But only two are shown in
the video: table and deletechars. Don't worry, this will be
explained later. For now, learn this little trick, doing this:

import string

string.translate(file_name,None,'0123456789')

is equivalent to doing this (putting file_name out front, in place of the string module):

file_name.translate(None,'0123456789')

Python 3 Note

String translation changed in the transition from Python 2.7 to Python 3. The translation table is now separate from the translate() function itself. To do this kind of translation in Python 3, you will need to create a translation table, and pass that into the translate() function:

translation_table = str.maketrans("0123456789", "          ", "0123456789")
filename.translate(translation_table)

You can read more about these changes in the documentation.