Hi linuxgirl,
The short answers are "Yes" (& "Yes") and "Yes". :-)
For the AppleScript approach, you could use the Finder's 'sort' command to obtain a list of file references sorted by creation date or modification date in descending order. Then, once you have that pre-sorted list, you could use a standard 'repeat' loop to go through the list sequentially, incrementing a counter variable and renaming each file in turn. [For details, see the official "AppleScript Finder Guide" and "Applescript Language Guide", available via Apple's own
AppleScript for Scripters web page dedicated to non-developer scripters. There you'll find links to the definitive online AppleScript reference manuals, all of which contain several useful examples and are also downloadable in PDF format. (Note: in the online frame-based "Applescript Language Guide", you may have to scroll all the way down the left pane to the 'Other Links' section before you can see the 'Download PDF' link.)]
Alternatively, there are some Contextual Menu items that could do what you want. E.g., one CM tool that I use quite a lot is Frank Reiff's shareware
"A Better Finder" CM suite. This suite includes the 'A Better Finder Rename' CM item which is quite powerful; among its many features is a 'Produce numbered list' option which can process the selected files by name, creation date or modification date, in either ascending or descending order. You could also check out the many other capable CM items available via the
Control-Click! web site.
[Update:- In addition, there are quite a few shareware and commercial stand-alone batch renamers. For example, see:- ChaoticSoftware's
Drop*Rename utility; or, Greg Swann's
Shane the Plane 2 utility; or, SkyTag Software's ever-popular
File Buddy 5 utility, whose File List window has a 'Rename Sequentially...' feature.]
Regards,
--Paul
[This message has been edited by Paul Crawford (edited 04-21-2000).]
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