[SOLVED] plucking a single file from multiple folders

lofijerm · 02-13-2012, 04:56 AM

Hello,

I have 'x' amount of folders in directory 'b'. Each folder has 2 files. One file ends in .avi, and the other is .whatever. No files are named the same.

How would I go about plucking the .avi file from each folder into directory 'b' in one swift move? Should I be using '*' or '?' in the terminal?

I could just go through each folder dragging and dropping the file I want, but I do this a lot and I need a solution. Anybody?

sys64738 · 02-13-2012, 05:11 AM

Hello,

Code:

find . -name "*.avi" -exec mv {} /path/to/b \;

that should do the job. If you also have files ending in *.AVI you could replace -name with -iname
which doesn't care about upper or lower letters.

colucix · 02-13-2012, 05:15 AM

Try the find command which is recursive by its nature:

Code:

find /path/to/b -mindepth 2 -name \*.avi -exec echo mv '{}' /path/to/b \;

The echo statement will display the commands to execute, without actually executing them. Check the result, then run again without echo.

lofijerm · 02-13-2012, 05:26 AM

Very swift indeed! Cheers to both of you.