CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashunixfilesystemssubdirectoryfile-move
Mpampirina
Mpampirina

Reputation: 103

How to move files from subfolders to their parent directory (unix, terminal)

I have a folder structure like this: A big parent folder named Photos. This folder contains 900+ subfolders named a_000, a_001, a_002 etc.

Each of those subfolders contain more subfolders, named dir_001, dir_002 etc. And each of those subfolders contain lots of pictures (with unique names).

I want to move all these pictures contained in the subdirectories of a_xxx inside a_xxx. (where xxx could be 001, 002 etc)

After looking in similar questions around, this is the closest solution I came up with:

for file in *; do
  if [ -d $file ]; then
    cd $file; mv * ./; cd ..; 
  fi
done

Another solution I got is doing a bash script:

#!/bin/bash
dir1="/path/to/photos/"
subs= `ls $dir1`

for i in $subs; do
  mv $dir1/$i/*/* $dir1/$i/ 
done

Still, I'm missing something, can you help?

(Then it would be nice to discard the empty dir_yyy, but not much of a problem at the moment)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2507

Answers (3)

infixed
infixed

Reputation: 1155

You can try this

#!/bin/bash
dir1="/path/to/photos/"
subs= `ls $dir1`

cp /dev/null /tmp/newscript.sh

for i in $subs; do
  find $dir1/$i -type f -exec echo mv \'\{\}\' $dir1/$i \; >> /tmp/newscript.sh
done

then open /tmp/newscript.sh with an editor or less and see if looks like what you are trying to do.

if it does then execute it with sh -x /tmp/newscript.sh

Upvotes: 1

Aserre
Aserre

Reputation: 5062

You could try the following bash script :

#!/bin/bash

#needed in case we have empty folders
shopt -s nullglob

#we must write the full path here (no ~ character)
target="/path/to/photos"

#we use a glob to list the folders. parsing the output of ls is baaaaaaaddd !!!!
#for every folder in our photo folder ... 
for dir in "$target"/*/
do
    #we list the subdirectories ...
    for sub in "$dir"/*/
    do
        #and we move the content of the subdirectories to the parent
        mv "$sub"/* "$dir"
        #if you want to remove subdirectories once the copy is done, uncoment the next line
        #rm -r "$sub"
    done
done

Here is why you don't parse ls in bash

Upvotes: 3

user8017719
user8017719

Reputation:

Make sure the directory where the files exist is correct (and complete) in the following script and try it:

#!/bin/bash
BigParentDir=Photos

for subdir in "$BigParentDir"/*/; do    # Select the a_001, a_002 subdirs
  for ssdir in "$subdir"/*/; do         # Select dir_001, … sub-subdirs
    for f in "$ssdir"/*; do             # Select the files to move
      if [[ -f $f ]]; do                # if indeed are files
         echo \
         mv "$ssdir"/* "$subdir"/       # Move the files.
      fi
    done
  done      
done

No file will be moved, just printed. If you are sure the script does what you want, comment the echo line and run it "for real".

Upvotes: 1

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