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I have various folders each containing files as such:

/.example1/example1.txt /.example1/example2.txt /.example2/example1.txt /.example2/example2.txt etc.

And want to find a way to move each of the files into a subfolder of its parent folder, eg:

/.example1/folder/example1.txt /.example1/folder/example2.txt /.example2/folder/example1.txt /.example2/folder/example2.txt etc.

Any ideas on a quick and simple way to do this for large amounts of files? I've already tried playing around with find but without much luck.

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2 Answers 2

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You can do it using GNU versions of find and mv like this:

find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type f -execdir mv -vt ./folder/. {} +

Where we constrain find to look for regular files 2 levels deep and then using the -execdir option to move the selected file(s) into the subdirectory folder which is co-adjacent to the selected file(s).

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find /.example1 -name example*.txt" -type f | awk -F\/ '{ for(i=1;i<=NF-1;i++) { path=path$i"/" } } END { print "mv "$0" "path"folder/"$NF }' | sh

Do a find on all the example files in the directory and then parse the returned output using awk, forming a move command that is executed with sh

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  • This would require a separate command for each .example1, .example2 etc. folder though? Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 11:17
  • OK, I've amended the answer to use awk instead. Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 11:41
  • It still only uses the /.example1 folder to start in (also missing a " from the -name argument). After replacing it with a . instead, it just ends with an interactive shell prompt instead, so I don't think the arguments are being passed correctly from awk. Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 12:05

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