Find files and move them

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Level 1

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Find files and move them

Hi there,
currently looking for a UNIX command (I will later on trigger it from Applescript ) that searches a specified folder (and it's sub-folders) and moves all files of a certain file type, i.e .mp3 files into another directory.

Any help greatly appreciated...

iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 1.2 GHz

Posted on Mar 15, 2009 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Mar 15, 2009 12:35 PM in response to mju:sick


find srcfolder -name "*.mp3" | xargs -J % mv % destfolder

Replace srcfolder and destfolder as appropriate.

Eric

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Answer 2

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Mar 15, 2009 1:33 PM in response to mju:sick

find specifiedfolder -iname "*.mp3" -exec /bin/mv {} anotherdirectory \;

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Answer 3

Mar 15, 2009 3:22 PM in response to mju:sick

This is painfully slow but should deal with file names with spaces-


find <source folder> -type f -iname "*mp3" -print0 | xargs -0 -J% mv % <destination folder>

Substitute <source folder> and <destination folder> with the appropriate paths.

Message was edited by: Mark Jalbert

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Answer 4

Mar 15, 2009 6:03 PM in response to Mark Jalbert

you may be able to speed it up a bit by searching spotlight for the files.

e.g.


mdfind 'kMDItemKind="MP3 Audio File"' -onlyin /Users/andya/Music/iTunes/ | sed -e 's/([ &(),_])/\ /g'

Then pass the output through the xarg command provided above.

Message was edited by: Nils C. Anderson

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Answer 5

mju:sick Author

Level 1

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Mar 15, 2009 6:16 PM in response to Mark Jalbert

First of all thanks to Eric,Tony,Mark and Nils for resolving this question so quickly. All of your Solutions were helpfull and have worked, even though compiling the scripts in applescript was a small hazzle that required a few tricks to fool the syntax.
For the intended use of this script I only need to handle relatively small data size (< 500 mb) so speed has not been the issue. Since Marks solution seemed to include the handling of filenames with spaces in the filenames, which happens with mp3s on a regular basis, I went with his choice.
The line took about 1 second to execute and did exactly as intended.
Thanks again.

Enjoy,
me

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Answer 6

mju:sick Author

Level 1

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Mar 15, 2009 6:26 PM in response to Nils C. Anderson

Another question I have wondered about:
Can these lines handle multiple searchterms, i.e. ".mp3" OR ".avi" ?
Not that I would care much since executing these commands runs so quickly, simply running 4 successive ones with different search terms would still be efficient compared to speeds offered by the gui, I simply would like to satisfy my curiousity...

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Answer 7

ericmeyers

Level 4

1,410 points

Mar 15, 2009 6:53 PM in response to mju:sick

Yes, using Mark's approach ..


find <source folder> -type f -iname "*mp3" -o -iname "*.avi" -print0 | xargs -0 -J% mv % <destination folder>

The -o means OR

Eric

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Answer 8

mju:sick Author

Level 1

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Mar 15, 2009 7:03 PM in response to ericmeyers

...

Thanks for clarifying.

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Answer 9

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Mar 16, 2009 4:30 PM in response to mju:sick

Since Marks solution seemed to include the handling of filenames with spaces in the filenames, which happens with mp3s on a regular basis, I went with his choice.

find specifiedfolder -iname "*.mp3" -exec /bin/mv {} anotherdirectory \;
will also handle spaces in filenames.

However, Mark's solution of using xargs is more efficient.

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