I need to select files which contain "Error" or "traffic" in their names, e.g.
abc_ERRor.csv raError.csv bsn_Error.csv bbbctraffic.csv ccc_traffic.csv ... and move them into corresponding directories like Error_directory and traffic_directory according to their names.
I tried this but it didn't work
mv $(ls test_file | grep -l 'Error>' *) Error_directory How can I do this from the command-line?
ls test_file | grep 'Error' Parsing the output of ls is rarely a good idea due to the wide range of characters that can occur in file names. A better solution might be:
find ./test_file -iname "*error*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} mv {} Error_directory Notice the -iname option. This will return case insensitive matches, allowing you to find and move files such as:
abc_ERRor.csv error_123.csv ErRoR_77.csv If you don't need your search to be case insensitive, something as simple as this should suffice:
mv test_file/*Error* Error_directory Further reading:
ls, but piping find directly to xargs isn't any safer. Use find -print0 | xargs -0 OR find ... -exec instead. Shell globs are usually the best way to go, if possible. Another possible solution is:
#!/bin/sh err_dir=~/errors tra_dir=~/traffic for f in *.csv; do case $f in *[Ee][Rr][Rr][Oo][Rr]*) mv -i $f $err_dir ;; *[Tt][Rr][Aa][Ff][Ii][Cc]*) mv -i $f $tra_dir ;; esac done sh since no bash-specific features were used or required in this snippet. Also, for future reference, case doesn't do word splitting so you don't need the double quotes around $f. sh doesn't do regex in case or anywhere else that I know of, and bash doesn't in case AFAIK. Usually globs are sufficient but if you require regex you might have to go with a fancier shell or find. In this particular case regular expressions are overkill. You could use find:
find test_file -type f -name "*Error*" -exec mv {} Error_directory/ \;
where -type f denotes that you are looking for files, -name states that you are matching on the pattern given. exec runs the following command, with the {} taking the place of files that match the parameters given to find.
If you want to use bash and do something more along the lines of what you've tried, a loop should do the trick:
for f in `ls test_file | grep 'Error'; do mv test_file/${f} Error_directory done In both examples, I've assumed test_file is a directory containing the files you are interested in.
ls | grep Error | xargs -I % mv % error-dir 
for fn in *.*; do for word in Error traffic; do echo "$fn" | grep -i "$word" && mkdir -p "$word"_directory && mv "$fn" "$word"_directory; done; done 
grepis irrelevant here. Start with the task, and then determine the tools, and try to avoid using Unix commands as verbs unless that is exactly what you mean.