Shell question: moving files into subdirectories by dates

timothee · 12-19-2005, 10:08 AM

Hi there,

I want to build myself a shell script to transfer all files under directory "A", to directories "B/date_of_the_file", where "date_of_the_file" is the date, in format YYYY_MM_DD, of the creation date of the file. I'm sure it can't be very complicated but I do not know where to begin. Any pointer would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tim

vls · 12-19-2005, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by timothee

...

I want to build myself a shell script to transfer all files under directory "A", to directories "B/date_of_the_file", where "date_of_the_file" is the date, in format YYYY_MM_DD, of the creation date of the file.

You can't get the actual creation time of a file but
but

Code:

stat -c %y filename

returns the last modified time like this: 2005-11-11 18:52:57.000000000 -0600

This is fairly easy so I'll let you work it out.

Hint: use a for loop; cut and command substitution to process the stat output.

Also use 'echo' instead of mv or cp to see exactly what happens before you destroy something important

Post if you get stuck.
[Slight edit to clarify sentence.]

timothee · 12-20-2005, 07:46 AM

Hi Vls,

Thanx, that helped. I've figured it out and here is my very first shell script

. Any comments would be most welcome.

Code:

#!/bin/sh
#
if [ ! $# -eq 2 ]
then
	echo Usage is \"move_around.sh origin_folder destination_folder\"
	exit
fi

# origin folder must be a readable directory
if [ ! -d $1 ]
then
	echo $1 is not a directory
	exit
fi

if [ ! -r $1 ]
then
	echo $1 is not readable
	exit
fi

# destination folder must be a writable directory
if [ ! -d $2 ]
then
	echo $2 is not a directory
	exit
fi

if [ ! -w $2 ]
then
	echo $2 is not writable
	exit
fi

# move files now
for of in `find $1 -iname *.jpg` ; do
	d=`stat -c %y $of`
	d=`echo $d | cut -c1-10 | tr "-" "_"`
	mkdir -p "$2/$d"
	mv "$of" "$2/$d/"
done

I wanted to use the destination file name explicitely but I couldn't figure out how to extract the filename from the full path in my variable $of, can it be done?

timmeke · 12-20-2005, 08:29 AM

Have a look at the
"basename"
command.

timothee · 12-20-2005, 08:34 AM

Ha yes, exactly what I wanted. Thanx

vls · 12-20-2005, 10:14 AM

Not too shabby.

Now you get to tinker with it for the rest of your life.