CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexperl
Ske
Ske

Reputation: 33

Move files based on text content

I have about 1000 files (they are not .txt, but they do contain text) that I want to move into subdirectories based on a specific part of the content of the files. Each line contains one or more copies of the string 

DTM+137:20131001

where the last eight digits are a date. I want to move a file with the above string to a subfolder named \01.10.2013\. Finding the string is easy enough with regex, but I don't have enough experience with any language to make it all work. I tried with Perl, but I didn't get very far.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 276

Answers (1)

Tim Pierce
Tim Pierce

Reputation: 5664

If you have a string like

$line = "DTM+137:20131001";

you can extract the month, day and year from it with a grouped regex like this:

($year, $month, $day) = $line =~ /:(\d\d\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)$/;

Once you have those, you can use them to build a new directory name:

$new_folder = sprintf("/some/directory/%02d.%02d.%04d", $day, $month, $year);

Create the new directory just in case:

mkdir 0755, $new_folder;

and use the rename call to move the file there:

rename $file, "$new_folder/$file";

This will probably need some adjustment for your particular problem, but it should help you get started.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions