Author: Copyright (C) 2014 by CiderPress authors

Rename Entry

This feature is disabled when an archive or disk image is opened in read-only mode.

Select one or more files to rename, then activate the "Rename..." command. A dialog opens for the first file.

The grey edit field on the top is the current name of the file. The edit field on the bottom is the name to change the file to; it defaults to the current name of the file. The box labeled "Path separator character" shows the character used to separate pathname components from each other in this specific file. This requires a little explanation.

If you have a folder "subdir", in which is a file called "foo", you would access it as "subdir\foo" under Windows. Under UNIX or ProDOS 8 you would use "subdir/foo", and under GS/OS you would write "subdir:foo". CiderPress follows the GS/OS convention, so pathnames from disk images and in files archived by CiderPress always use ':'.

Suppose you tried to extract a file called "subdir/foo:bar". On a UNIX system this would be a folder called "subdir" with a file called "foo:bar" in it, but on an HFS filesystem that would be a folder called "subdir/foo" with a file called "bar" in it. ShrinkIt archives were intended to be multi-platform, so the format requires the application adding the file to specify the value for the separator. Most archives use '/' or ':', but a few use '\'.

This is important to understand because, when renaming files in a ShrinkIt archive, you're not just changing the filename, you're changing the entire pathname. You can effectively move a file into a different subdirectory by renaming "subdir1:foo" to "subdir2:foo". You need to be aware that the path separator character isn't always the same for every file.

You can change the path separator character for files in NuFX archives. The NufxLib library used by CiderPress currently does not allow a null value for the separator, so if you try to delete the character altogether, CiderPress will substitute ASCII value 0xff, which looks like a 'y' with an umlaut under Windows. This value can also appear for files copied & pasted from DOS disk images. This behavior may be corrected in a future release of NufxLib.

If you're renaming a file on a disk image, you will be shown the full path but can only change the file name. (There is currently no way to "move" a file to a different subdirectory, but you can copy and paste the file to a new folder if the disk has sufficient space.)

After choosing the new name, press "OK" to accept it. The dialog will update to show the name of the next file in the list. If you decide you don't want to rename this file, you can either click on "Skip" to move on to the next entry or "Cancel" to drop out of the process.

ShrinkIt stores disk images with the disk volume name, not a pathname. For this reason, the filename separator character cannot be part of a disk image name.

If you have one of the filename alterations enabled, such as conversion to lower case or replacing spaces with underscores, you will be shown the name with the modifications already made. If you press "OK", the alterations will become a permanent part of the archive, and will not go away when you turn the alterations off. You may want to switch these off before renaming entries.

The aux type of AppleWorks files is not updated in ShrinkIt archives when the filename changes. (The aux type is used as lower-case flags.) This may result in strange-looking filenames when the contents are extracted to a disk image. The lower case flags are set appropriately when AppleWorks files are renamed on a disk image, even if the ProDOS "allow lower case" preference is turned off.

You cannot rename the volume directory of a ProDOS or HFS volume. Attempts to do so will be silently ignored. Use the Rename Volume command instead.

Some HFS files may have strange characters in the filenames. These are "Macintosh Roman" characters that don't translate directly to Windows equivalents. The names in the file list are "sanitized", with characters like '¥' converted to simple letters and numbers, but when renaming a file the name is presented unmodified.