How can I extract metadata from file names?

Question

If I want to extract metadata from file names? How can I do that? I want to read through the file names and when I get to a certain character ("-"), I can take the string just before that character and store it in a column in SharePoint. Is this
do-able through scripting? 

Answer 1

If I want to extract metadata from file names? How can I do that? I want to read through the file names and when I get to a certain character ("-"), I can take the string just before that character and store it in a column in SharePoint.
Is this do-able through scripting? 
You should be able to leverage the split method.
In PowerShell It would look like:
# Gather the file name
$file = "myawesome_filename-Month-Day-Year-Ect.doc"
#split the file name by the "-" character
$file = $file.split("-")
# Use a foreach Loop to gather the individual items.
foreach ($item in $file) {
write-host $item
#Outputmyawesome_filename
Month
Day
Year
Ect.doc
# If you want to only grab the first item, you can do $file[0] <-- powershell starts counting with zero base.
$file[0]
#output
myawesome_filename
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