Apple automator / script to rename images from folder using a CSV file

Header, or no header in the .csv file?

The following Bash script will take the .csv file as a command-line argument, and using a comma as the .csv separator character, rename the specified image files to the new filenames. The Bash script would reside in the same folder as the image files. This particular example does not handle the header in the .csv file.

Steps:

1. Copy/paste the following Bash script into a plain text editor, and save as csv.sh (arbitrary name) in the image folder.
2. Mark the script executable:
   chmod +x ./csv.sh
3. Run the script in the Terminal
   ./csv.sh ./your.csv

#!/bin/bash


# Read in a two-column, comma-separated values .csv file and
# rename col1 filename to col2 filename


# usage: ./csv.sh ./this.csv
# simply exit if no file argument supplied on command-line
[[ ! $# ]] && exit 1


for f in "$@"
do
    # if the extension of the input file is not csv, then exit
    [[ ! "${f##*.}" = csv ]] && echo "Not a CSV format file" && exit 1


    while IFS=, read old new
    do
        mv "$old" "$new"
    done < "$f"
done
exit 0

Header, or no header in the .csv file?

The following Bash script will take the .csv file as a command-line argument, and using a comma as the .csv separator character, rename the specified image files to the new filenames. The Bash script would reside in the same folder as the image files.

Steps:

1. Copy/paste the Bash script into a plain text editor, and save as csv.sh (arbitrary name) in the image folder.
2. In the Terminal, change into the specific directory in your home directory:
   cd ~/foldername
3. Mark the script executable:
   chmod +x ./csv.sh
4. Run the script in the Terminal
   ./csv.sh ./your.csv
   

Bash script:

#!/bin/bash


# Read in a two-column, comma-separated values .csv file and
# rename col1 filename to col2 filename


# usage: ./csv.sh ./this.csv
# simply exit if no file argument supplied on command-line
[[ ! $# ]] && exit 1


for f in "$@"
do
    # if the extension of the input file is not csv, then exit
    [[ ! "${f##*.}" = csv ]] && echo "Not a CSV format file" && exit 1


    while IFS=, read old new
    do
        mv "$old" "$new"
    done < "$f"
done
exit 0

Clean up the literal double-quotes on your renamed files. Once you have done this, then in the same folder as your renamed images, run this one-liner in the Terminal:

for f in *.jpg\?;do mv "$x" "${x%.*}.jpg";done

This will make a list of all .jpg? filenames, and then rename each one with a correct (.jpg) extension. You will need to do this for each affected image type with a trailing question mark.

When parsing .csv files, it is important to know in advance for proper programmatic processing:

1. if the .csv originated from MS Windows, or was saved on a Mac with CRLF line endings with a Windows destination in mind. A .csv should be saved as UTF-8 plain text, and not the Excel default of UTF-16.
2. If the .csv entries are quoted or not. If not, do any entries contain spaces?
3. What is the column separator character. Usually, but not always a comma. It should not be within data elements.
4. Does the .csv contain a heading row.

The script needs to be saved as plain text, not rtf if you used TextEdit. Is the first line of the script #!/bin/bash?

Sorry for the redundant post. The hosting software was not showing the first response, even after a browser refresh.

I believe you will also get that error if you saved the Excel .csv file as UTF-16, as it places a byte-order-mark (BOM) as the first character of the .csv, and this will explode the shell script that is expecting UTF-8 plain text .csv.

Can you screencapture (shift+command+4) and drag over the first five lines of your Excel file, that you should be able to use Quick Look (spacebar) to view? Use the camera icon in this toolbar to post that screencapture image back here. Also, screencapture one of the filenames from in the Terminal, or where you see the trailing '?'.

There is nothing in the shell script that explicitly places quotes around, or forces a trailing ? character on your filenames. The double-quotes that you see in the script are there to manage filenames with white-space. On the other hand, did you generate an Excel .csv with quoted entries, which this script would dutifully consider as legitimate parts of the filenames?

Did this Excel .csv originate on Windows, or Mac?

A slight revision that does not attempt to execute the command if no specified file is found. Copy and paste line by line into the Terminal and follow each with a return. Again, in the folder where these files were renamed:

shopt -s nullglob

for x in *.jpg\?; do mv $x "${x%.*}.jpg";done

shopt -u nullglob

If you are saying that your renamed images are ending as foo.jpg?, then I have a one-liner loop that strips this trailing question mark from these images, leaving foo.jpg.