Mass rename of keywords

[brabalan]

I’m trying to change a keyword for many files, and it’s not great to do it manually. Do you have a suggestion on how to do it for a bunch of files?

[brabalan]

I have written a function to replace a single tag, but I’m wondering what is the best way to apply it to my whole denote collection:

(defun my-denote-replace-keyword (old new file)
  (let* ((old-keywords (denote-extract-keywords-from-path file))
         (keywords (cons new (delete old old-keywords)))
         (denote-rename-confirmations nil))
    (denote-rename-file file 'keep-current keywords 'keep-current 'keep-current)))

[protesilaos]

I’m trying to change a keyword for many files, and it’s not great to do it manually. Do you have a suggestion on how to do it for a bunch of files?

Maybe this can be done with the command denote-dired-rename-marked-files-with-keywords?

I have written a function to replace a single tag, but I’m wondering what is the best way to apply it to my whole denote collection

What I would do for a common case is:

1. Call denote-dired and search for _KEYWORD.
2. Type t (dired-toggle-marks) to mark all the matching files.
3. Use denote-dired-rename-marked-files-with-keywords on them.

Otherwise, your custom function looks like a step in the right direction. Check how we do it for many files in denote-dired-rename-marked-files, so you may then adapt your function to rename only the ones you are interested in.

[brabalan]

Thank you for the suggestion, it works great. I used the add-keywords and remove-keywords variants as I wanted to keep the other keywords.

I noticed a small shortcoming, though: as the files are renamed, their name change and I ended up with errors of the form dired-insert-directory: Reading directory: No such file or directory, files/20230327T081624--***.pdf (I’m hiding the name), where the name mentioned is the one before renaming. This is only shown for one file, but the renaming succeeds anyway.