Looping through list of shapefiles to rename them using ArcPy?

Question

I am trying to upgrade a simple script to list all shapefiles in a folder and if necessary in any folders within and then loop through the list of shapefiles and rename them.

import arcpy

# Set work environment
arcpy.env.workspace = "C:\\Users\\Rachael\\Documents\\Export"

# List shapefiles in folders
shp = arcpy.ListDatasets()

try:
  for shp in arcpy.ListDatasets():
    if arcpy.Exists("Histori2.shp"):
      arcpy.Rename_management("Histori2.shp", "H_BEV_CANS.shp")

Answer 1

You need to use arcpy.ListFeatureClasses(), not ListDatasets().

This code is directly from the online help. Just replace "CopyFeatures" with "Rename".

import arcpy
from arcpy import env
import os

# Set the workspace for the ListFeatureClass function
#
env.workspace = "c:/base"

# Use the ListFeatureClasses function to return a list of 
#  all shapefiles.
#
fcList = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()

# Copy shapefiles to a file geodatabase
#
for fc in fcList:
    arcpy.CopyFeatures_management(fc, "d:/base/output.gdb" + os.sep + fc.rstrip(".shp"))

Answer 2

Well, you are defining shp and then using the same variable name in your loop for something else--this is bad practice, as it's confusing and you open your code up to unexpected results.

As it currently stands, you are only renaming one shapefile. Is there more hardcoded values after this?

It you know the names of the shapefiles and what you want to change them into, an easy way would be to dump these in a txt file, like this:

Histori2.shp,H_BEV_CANS.shp

Histori3.shp,H_CANS.shp

arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\Users\Rachael\Documents\Export"
rename = [x.strip().split(",") for x in open(r"<path to text file>", "r")]

for old,new in rename:
  if arcpy.Exists(old):
    arcpy.Rename_management(old, new)