As a rather novice Linux user, I can't seem to find how to do this.
I am trying to move unique files all in one directory into another directory.
Example:
$ ls
vehicle car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx (more files)
I want car.txt, bicycle.txt, airplane.html, and train.docx inside vehicle.
Right now I do this by moving the files individually:
$ mv car.txt vehicle
$ mv bicycle.txt vehicle
...
How can I do this in one line?
You can do
mv car.txt bicycle.txt vehicle/
(Note that the / above is unnecessary, I include it merely to ensure that vehicle is a directory.)
You can test this as follows:
cd #Move to home directory
mkdir temp #Make a temporary directory
touch a b c d #Make test (empty) files ('touch' also updates the modification date of an existing file to the current time)
ls #Verify everything is there
mv a b c d temp/ #Move files into temp
ls #See? They are gone.
ls temp/ #Oh, there they are!
rm -rf temp/ #DESTROY (Be very, very careful with this command)
Shorthand command to move all .txt file
You can try using a wildcard. In the code below, * will match all the files which have any name ending with .txt or .docx, and move them to the vehicle folder.
mv *.txt *.docx vehicle/
If you want to move specific files to a directory
mv car.txt bicycle.txt vehicle/
Edit: As mentioned in a comment, If you are moving files by hand, I suggest using mv -i ... which will warn you in case the destination file already exists, giving you a choice of not overwriting it. Other 'file destroyer' commands like cp & rm too have a -i option
mv command in linux allow us to move more than one file into another directory. All you have to do is write the name of each file you want to move, seperated by a space.
Following command will help you:
mv car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx vehicle
or
mv car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx vehicle/
both of them will work.
You can move multiple files to a specific directory by using mv command.
In your scenario it can be done by,
mv car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx vehicle/
The point you must note is that the last entry is the destination and rest everything except mv is source.
One another scenario is that the destination is not present in our directory,then we must opt for absolute path in place of vehicles/.
Note: Absolute path always starts from / ,which means we are traversing from root directory.
I have written a small bash script that will move multiple files(matched using pattern) present in multiple directories(matched using pattern) to a single location using mv and find command in bash
#!/bin/bash
for i in $(find /path/info/*/*.fna -type f) # find files and return their path
do
mv -iv $i -t ~/path/to/destination/directory # move files
done
$() is for command substitution(in other words it expand the expression inside it)
/*/ wild card for matching any directory, you can replace this with any wild card expression
*.fna is for finding any file with.fna extension
-type f is for getting the full path info of the located file
-i in mv is for prompt before overwrite( extra caution in case the wild card exp was wrong)
-v for verbose
-t for destination
NOTE: the above flags are not mandatory
Hope this helps
Related
I have the following structure:
FolderA
Sub1
Sub2
filexx.csv
filexx.doc
FolderB
Sub1
Sub2
fileyy.csv
fileyy.doc
I want to write a script that will move the .csv files into the folder sub1 for each parent directory (Folder A, Folder B and so on) giving me the following structure:
FolderA
Sub1
filexx.csv
Sub2
filexx.doc
FolderB
Sub1
fileyy.csv
Sub2
fileyy.doc
This is what I have till now but I get the error mv: cannot stat *.csv: No such file or directory
for f in */*/*.csv; do
mv -v "$f" */*/Sub1;
done
for f in */*/*.doc; do
mv -v "$f" */*/Sub2;
done
I am new to bash scripting so please forgive me if I have made a very obvious mistake. I know I can do this in Python as well but it will be lengthier which is why I would like a solution using linux commands.
find . -name "*.csv" -type f -execdir mv '{}' Sub1/ \;
Using find, search for all files with the extension .csv and then when we find them, execute a move command from within the directory containing the files, moving the files to directory Sub1
find . -name "*.doc" -type f -execdir mv '{}' Sub2/ \;
Follow the same principle for files with the extension .doc but this time, move the files to Sub2.
I believe you are getting this error because no file matched your wildcard. When it happens, the for loop will give $f the value of the wildcard itself. You are basically trying to move the file *.csv which does not exist.
To prevent this behavior, you can add shopt -s nullglob at the top of your script. When using this, if no file is found, your script won't enter the loop.
My advise is, make sure you run your script from the correct location when using wildcards like this. But maybe what you meant to do by writing */*/*.csv is to recursively match all the csv files. If that's what you intended to do, this is not the right way to do it.
To recursively match all csv/doc/etc files using native bash you can add shopt -s globstar to the top of your script and use **/*.csv as wildcard
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s globstar nullglob
for f in **/*.csv; do
mv "$f" Destination/ # Note that $f is surrounded by "" to handle whitespaces in filenames
done
You could also use the find (1) utility to achieve that. But if you're planning to do more processing on the files than just moving them, a for loop might be cleaner as you won't have to inline everything in the same command.
Side note : "Linux commands" as you say are actually not Linux commands, they are part of the GNU utilities (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html)
If csv files you want to move are in the top directories (from the point of view of the current directory), but not in the subdirectories of them, then simply:
#!/bin/bash
for dir in */; do
mv -v "$dir"*.csv "${dir}Sub1/"
mv -v "$dir"*.doc "${dir}Sub2/"
done
If the files in all subdirectories are wanted to be moved similarly, then:
shopt -s globstar
for file in **/*.csv; do
mv -v "$file" "${file%/*}/Sub1/"
done
for file in **/*.doc; do
mv -v "$file" "${file%/*}/Sub2/"
done
Note that, the directories Sub1 and Sub2 are relative to the directory where csv and doc files reside.
I'm trying to learn bash on Linux, just for fun. I thought it would be pretty useful to have a .sh that would group together similar files. For example, let's say we have the directory
/home/docs/
Inside the directory we have /mathdocs/, /codingdocs/, etc.
Inside those sub-directories we have doc.txt, in all of them. Same name for all the files on the subdirectories.
Let's say I want to group them together, and I want to move all the files to /home/allthedocs/ and rename them after the directories they were in. (mathdocs.txt, codingdocs.txt, etc.)
How could I do that?
I've tried to create a script based on the ls and cp commmands, but I don't know how I can take the name of the directories to rename the files in it after I moved them. I guess it has to be some sort of iterative sentence (for X on Y directories) but I don't know how to do it.
You can move and rename your file in one shot with mv, with a loop that grabs all your files through a glob:
#!/bin/bash
dest_dir=/home/allthedocs
cd /home/docs
for file in */doc.txt; do
[[ -f "$file" ]] || continue # skip if not a regular file
dir="${file%/*}" # get the dir name from path
mv "$file" "$dest_dir/$dir.txt"
done
See this post for more info:
Copying files from multiple directories into a single destination directory
Here is a one liner solution that treats whitespaces in filenames, just as #codeforester 's solution does with the glob.
Note that white spaces are treated with the "-print0" option passed to "find", the internal field separator (IFS) in while loop and the wrapping of file3 variable with quotes.
The parameter substitution from file2 into file3 gets rid of the leading "./".
The parameter substition inside the move command turns the path into a filename (run under /home/docs/):
find . -maxdepth 2 -mindepth 2 -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; \
do file2=$(printf '%s\n' "$file"); file3=${file2#*\/*}; \
mv "$file2" ../allsil/"${file3//\//}"; done
I have the following script, which I normally use when I get a bunch of files that need to be renamed to the directory name which contains them.
The problem now is I need to rename the file to the directory two levels up. How can I get the grandparent directory to make this work?
With the following I get errors like this example:
"mv: cannot move ./48711/zoom/zoom.jpg to ./48711/zoom/./48711/zoom.jpg: No such file or directory". This is running on CentOS 5.6.
I want the final file to be named: 48711.jpg
#!/bin/bash
function dirnametofilename() {
for f in $*; do
bn=$(basename "$f")
ext="${bn##*.}"
filepath=$(dirname "$f")
dirname=$(basename "$filepath")
mv "$f" "$filepath/$dirname.$ext"
done
}
export -f dirnametofilename
find . -name "*.jpg" -exec bash -c 'dirnametofilename "{}"' \;
find .
Another method could be to use
(cd ../../; pwd)
If this were executed in any top-level paths such as /, /usr/, or /usr/share/, you would get a valid directory of /, but when you get one level deeper, you would start seeing results: /usr/share/man/ would return /usr, /my/super/deep/path/is/awesome/ would return /my/super/deep/path, and so on.
You could store this in a variable as well:
GRANDDADDY="$(cd ../../; pwd)"
and then use it for the rest of your script.
Assuming filepath doesn't end in /, which it shouldn't if you use dirname, you can do
Parent = "${filepath%/*}"
Grandparent = "${filepath%/*/*}"
So do something like this
[[ "${filepath%/*/*}" == "" ]] && echo "Path isn't long enough" || echo "${filepath%/*/*}"
Also this likely won't work if you're using relative paths (like find .). In which case you will want to use
filepath=$(dirname "$f")
filepath=$(readlink -f "$filepath")
instead of
filepath=$(dirname "$f")
Also you're never stripping the extension, so there is no reason to get it from the file and then append it again.
Note:
* This answer solves the OP's specific problem, in whose context "grandparent directory" means: the parent directory of the directory containing a file (it is the grandparent path from the file's perspective).
* By contrast, given the question's generic title, other answers here focus (only) on getting a directory's grandparent directory; the succinct answer to the generic question is: grandParentDir=$(cd ../..; printf %s "$PWD") to get the full path, and grandParentDirName=$(cd ../..; basename -- "$PWD") to get the dir. name only.
Try the following:
find . -name '*.jpg' \
-execdir bash -c \
'old="$1"; new="$(cd ..; basename -- "$PWD").${old##*.}"; echo mv "$old" "$new"' - {} \;
Note: echo was prepended to mv to be safe - remove it to perform the actual renaming.
-execdir ..\; executes the specified command in the specific directory that contains a given matching file and expands {} to the filename of each.
bash -c is used to execute a small ad-hoc script:
$(cd ..; basename -- "$PWD") determines the parent directory name of the directory containing the file, which is the grandparent path from the file's perspective.
${old##*.} is a Bash parameter expansion that returns the input filename's suffix (extension).
Note how {} - the filename at hand - is passed as the 2nd argument to the command in order to bind to $1, because bash -c uses the 1st one to set $0 (which is set to dummy value _ here).
Note that each file is merely renamed, i.e., it stays in its original directory.
Caveat:
Each directory with a matching file should only contain 1 matching file, otherwise multiple files will be renamed to the same target name in sequence - effectively, only the last file renamed will survive.
Can't you use realpath ../../ or readlink -f ../../ ? See this, readlink(1), realpath(3), canonicalize_file_name(3), and realpath(1). You may want to install the realpath package on Debian or Ubuntu. Probably CentOS has an equivalent package. (readlink should always be available, it is in GNU coreutils)
Is it possible to get around this problem?
I have a situation where I need to move some files to 1 directory below.
/a/b/c/d/e/f/g
problem is that the filename inside g/ directory is the same as the directory name
and I receive the following error:
mv: cannot overwrite directory `../297534' with non-directory
Example:
/home/user/data/doc/version/3766/297534 is a directory, inside there is a also a file named 297534
so I need to move this file to be inside /home/user/data/doc/version/3766
Command
This is what I am running: (in a for loop)
cd /home/user/data/doc/version/3766/297534
mv * ../
You can't force mv to overwrite a directory with a file with the same name. You'll need to remove that file before you use your mv command.
Add one more layer in your loop.
Replace mv * ../ with
for f in `ls`; do rm -rf ../$f; mv $f ..; done
This will ensure that any conflict will be deleted first, assuming that you don't care about the directory you're overwriting.
Note that this will blow up if you happen to have a file inside the current directory which matches the current directory's name. For example, if you're in /home/user/data/doc/version/3766/297534 and you're trying to move a directory called 297534 up. One workaround to this is to add a long suffix to every file, so there's little chance of a match
for f in `ls`; do mv $f ../${f}_abcdefg; done
Its must be a popular question but I could not find an answer.
How to move all files via * including hidden files as well to parent directory like this:
mv /path/subfolder/* /path/
This will move all files to parent directory like expected but will not move hidden files. How to do that?
You can find a comprehensive set of solutions on this in UNIX & Linux's answer to How do you move all files (including hidden) from one directory to another?. It shows solutions in Bash, zsh, ksh93, standard (POSIX) sh, etc.
You can use these two commands together:
mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ # your current approach
mv /path/subfolder/.* /path/ # this one for hidden files
Or all together (thanks pfnuesel):
mv /path/subfolder/{.,}* /path/
Which expands to:
mv /path/subfolder/* /path/subfolder/.* /path/
(example: echo a{.,}b expands to a.b ab)
Note this will show a couple of warnings:
mv: cannot move ‘/path/subfolder/.’ to /path/.’: Device or resource busy
mv: cannot remove /path/subfolder/..’: Is a directory
Just ignore them: this happens because /path/subfolder/{.,}* also expands to /path/subfolder/. and /path/subfolder/.., which are the directory and the parent directory (See What do “.” and “..” mean when in a folder?).
If you want to just copy, you can use a mere:
cp -r /path/subfolder/. /path/
# ^
# note the dot!
This will copy all files, both normal and hidden ones, since /path/subfolder/. expands to "everything from this directory" (Source: How to copy with cp to include hidden files and hidden directories and their contents?)
I think this is the most elegant, as it also does not try to move ..:
mv /source/path/{.[!.],}* /destination/path
This will move all files to parent directory like expected but will
not move hidden files. How to do that?
You could turn on dotglob:
shopt -s dotglob # This would cause mv below to match hidden files
mv /path/subfolder/* /path/
In order to turn off dotglob, you'd need to say:
shopt -u dotglob
Alternative simpler solution is to use rsync utility:
sudo rsync -vuar --delete-after --dry-run path/subfolder/ path/
Note: Above command will show what is going to be changed. To execute the actual changes, remove --dry-run.
The advantage is that the original folder (subfolder) would be removed as well as part of the command, and when using mv examples here you still need to clean up your folders, not to mention additional headache to cover hidden and non-hidden files in one single pattern.
In addition rsync provides support of copying/moving files between remotes and it would make sure that files are copied exactly as they originally were (-a).
The used -u parameter would skip existing newer files, -r recurse into directories and -v would increase verbosity.
By using the find command in conjunction with the mv command, you can prevent the mv command from trying to move directories (e.g. .. and .) and subdirectories. Here's one option:
find /path/subfolder -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '*' -exec mv -n {} /path \;
There are problems with some of the other answers provided. For example, each of the following will try to move subdirectories from the source path:
1) mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ ; mv /path/subfolder/.* /path/
2) mv /path/subfolder/{.,}* /path/
3) mv /source/path/{.[!.],}* /destination/path
Also, 2) includes the . and .. files and 3) misses files like ..foobar, ...barfoo, etc.
You could use, mv /source/path/{.[!.],..?,}* /destination/path, which would include the files missed by 3), but it would still try to move subdirectories. Using the find command with the mv command as I describe above eliminates all these problems.
Let me introduce you to my friend "dotglob". It turns on and off whether or not "*" includes hidden files.
$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ touch a b c .hidden .hi .den
$ ls -a
. .. .den .hi .hidden a b c
$ shopt -u dotglob
$ ls *
a b c
$ for i in * ; do echo I found: $i ; done
I found: a
I found: b
I found: c
$ shopt -s dotglob
$ ls *
.den .hi .hidden a b c
$ for i in * ; do echo I found: $i ; done
I found: .den
I found: .hi
I found: .hidden
I found: a
I found: b
I found: c
It defaults to "off".
$ shopt dotglob
dotglob off
It is best to turn it back on when you are done otherwise you will confuse things that assume it will be off.
My solution for this problem when I have to copy all the files (including . files) to a target directory retaining the permissions is: (overwrite if already exists)
yes | cp -rvp /source/directory /destination/directory/
yes is for automatically overwriting destination files,
r recursive,
v verbose,
p retain permissions.
Notice that the source path is not ending with a / (so all the files/directory and . files are copied)
Destination directory ends with / as we are placing contents of the source folder to destination as a whole.
Just do
for I in $(ls -A dir)
do
mv dir/$I newDir
done
Assuming you are in the subfolder
run find . -maxdepth 1 -exec mv {} .. \;