CODEWITHSUNDEEP
command-linedoswildcard
Dan Evans
Dan Evans

Reputation: 13

Moving all files from MANY folders up one level - command line

I have tens of thousands of *.wav files spread out across hundreds of folders. I need help to get command line to move all files up one level. The directory structure for all these files are identical, but the names of the folders vary slightly:

Z:\Audio\Level*\story*\VOCAB\*.wav

All files are located in the VOCAB folders, and I need to move them to the story* folders:

Z:\Audio\Level*\story*\*.wav

I can do this from command line by running a move command on each individual folder, but is there a way to run it recursively on all files within the entire directory? Can I use a wildcard in the location path?

Notes: The * in Level* and story* are numbers 01-24.
I'm on Windows XP Professional.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4847

Answers (2)

contributor
contributor

Reputation: 21

try something like:

for /r %F in (*.wav) do move %F %~pF\..

refer to for /? from command prompt as reference (particularly in case I didn't 'code' that quite right...)

I suggest starting it from within \Audio directory.

Upvotes: 2

Chris Young
Chris Young

Reputation: 1809

Found a similar question in another forum (http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,98046.0/all.html).

Modifying some of their code, here's a batch file script that might do the trick (please try on a small subset before unleashing it on everything):

@echo off
set thisdir=%cd%
for /f "delims=" %%A in ('dir /b /ad') do (
    cd /d "%%~dpnA"
    for /f "delims=" %%B in ('dir /b /ad') do (
        echo Level 2 Directory: %%~dpnB
        cd /d "%%~dpnB"
        for /f "delims=" %%C in ('dir /b /ad') do (
            echo Level 3 Directory: %%~dpnC
            cd /d "%%~dpnC"
            move *.* ..\
            cd ..
            rd "%%~dpnC"
        )
        cd ..
    )
    cd..
)
cd /d "%thisdir%

Upvotes: 0

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