I was wondering if there was a command to move files from one directory to another subdirectory based on the timestamp, i.e. moving from directory A files that have a timestamp of before the year 2005 into directory B. Directory B is a subdirectory located in directory A. I was advised to concatenate commands mv and find ... printed out the "man find" manual but it didn't make much sense. I also tried googling around but was not able to come upon any sites that talked about either moving files based on the timestamp, or concatenating the mv and find commands.

Please help!

Thanks.

Please use the search function on this site to locate threads that will help you answer your question. You will no doubt see many links on the use of find. Also, please see the FAQ section on this site as there is a FAQ regarding the use of find. Finally, please take a moment to read the rules of the board.

I came across examples of using the find command in the thread ls Help. It looks like probably some variation of a find / -mtime -63 will be included in the command. But how do I concatenate the mv command with the find? I tried searching for "concatenate commands" and "combine commands" in the forum but didn't come up with something that will assist me in this regard. Is there some sort of syntax that's to be followed when telling UNIX to move files that are older than x days old, in the above-example, 63 days old?
--- Edit ---
I tried executing mv * /DestinationDirectory/ | find / -mtime -63 but it started to go through the entire mount or something. I saw directories UNIX was checking that I didn't even want it to go through.
I was in the directory that I wanted to move the files for that were older than sixty days when I typed pwd to make sure I was in the right location.

You will need to use xargs or exec to process what find "finds". As an example: find / -name '*junk*' -exec mv * /new-dir/ {} \;

Here is a thread with a solution to your problem

You can confine your search to one year by using find with the "-newer" and "! -newer" against files you create with a specific date using "touch".

See this thread but consider setting the "-newer" file to the last minute of the previous year and the "! -newer" to the first minute of the following year.

files between any two given dates


With a bit of cleverness the year can be a parameter.