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Full Discussion: Help with command to Move files by X number to seperate directories
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Help with command to Move files by X number to seperate directories Post 302407427 by alister on Thursday 25th of March 2010 05:23:46 PM
Old 03-25-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by ak835
what if in a folder we have thousands of files ,lets say for past 2 years...

how can i search files of 2009 and just move them to a separate folder ?

date format being : 2009-03-25....

can 'xargs' be used here? if yes,how ?
It's probably best to start your own thread for this question. Aside from having to deal with a lot of files, it really has nothing to do with the original poster's problem and will only muddle the discussion, in my opinion.

Regards,
Alister

---------- Post updated at 04:48 PM ---------- Previous update was at 11:25 AM ----------


Hello, bakunin:

Quote:
Originally Posted by bakunin
The most important thing to take into account is to avoid using a for-loop: you would run into an "argument list too long"-error.
That's actually bad advice in general (there is absolutely no need to avoid using a for loop because the list may be very very long), and it's terrible advice in this particular case, where a glob in a for loop's list is by far the simplest and safest way to handle a directory of files (field splitting is not a concern since the glob is expanded during the penultimate step in shell command line processing, only quote removal follows it).

Your warning regarding "argument list too long" scenarios does not apply to a shell expanding a wildcard, which is done internally and does not require an exec system call. Nor does it apply to the for loop since that is also internal. Nor does it apply to any commands within the for loop since they are fed the list items one at a time. For more info regarding ARGMAX issues, The maximum length of arguments for a new process may be helpful.

To test for yourself, you can execute the following (if your system has jot, if not perhaps you can tweak it to use seq, or even brace expansion):
Code:
$ for f in $(jot -w '%0100d' 100000); do touch "$f"; done
$ for f in *; do :; done

That will create 100,000 files, each with a 100 character filename, and then run a do-nothing loop which nevertheless has to expand the * wildcard.

Regarding your solution, there are some caveats: it will not properly handle any files which contain leading whitespace, embedded newlines, or a trailing backslash. The whitespace and trailing backslash can be fixed by tweaking IFS and using read's -r option. The embedded newline however cannot be worked around (at least not with any posix-compliant functionality in ls/read that I'm aware of).

On an unrelated note, the following idiom will always return a 0 exit status, since when the exit command executes, the value of $? is the exit status of the [ command, which must have succeeded if the exit has been reached.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bakunin
Code:
mv "$fSrcDir/$fFile" "${fTgtDir}/Part${iPart}"
if [ $? -gt 0 ] ; then
    exit $?
fi

A simple, correct way would be:
Code:
mv "$fSrcDir/$fFile" "${fTgtDir}/Part${iPart}" || exit

exit will only execute if mv fails, and it will return mv's exit status (the last command run).

The solution you provided also assumes that all the target directories exist, since there is no mkdir anywhere (that may be intentional, I'm just pointing it out to save the original poster some time Smilie

Please don't take the above criticisms personally; they are intended to be helpful. If my analysis is erroneous, I would appreciate being corrected.

Regards,
Alister

---------- Post updated at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:48 PM ----------

Hello, jgt:

Quote:
Originally Posted by jgt
Code:
#!/bin/ksh
cd dirA
ls >../list
x=1
y=1
mkdir ../dir$y
while read file
do
   mv $file ../dir$y
   x=`expr $x + 1` 
   if [ $x -gt 10000 ]
   then
       x=1
       y=`expr $y + 1`
       mkdir ../dir$y
   fi
done < ../list

This solution is broken with regard to whitespace. $file in the mv should be double-quoted. There are also problems with the way read is used, which will mangle filenames with leading whitespace, embedded newlines, and a trailing backlash.

I mention it only in case the original poster's monster directory has some susceptible filenames.

Regards,
Alister

---------- Post updated at 05:23 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:57 PM ----------

My attempt at a solution. It should handle any filenames without issue. The only downside is that it must execute mv once per file to move. However, I'll take the performance hit over possible breakage when mv'ing 100K files one at a time only takes about 5 minutes on a 3 yr old laptop with a slow drive. It operates on the current working directory and also creates the necessary destination directories (001, 002, ...) in the current working directory.
Code:
#!/bin/sh

i=0
for f in *; do
    if [ $((i%10000)) -eq 0 ]; then
        dest=$(printf '%03u' $((i/10000+1)))
        mkdir $dest || exit 2
    fi
    mv "$f" $dest || exit 1
    : $((++i))
done

Creating 100,000 files with 100 character long filenames:
Code:
$ for f in $(jot -w '%0100d' 100000); do touch "$f"; done

A test run, followed by a some simple checks:
Code:
$ ../mv10k.sh 

$ ls
001     002     003     004     005     006     007     008     009     010

$ for d in *; do echo $d: $(ls $d | wc -l) files; ls $d | head -n2; echo ...snip...; ls $d | tail -n2; echo =================; done
001: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000009999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010000
=================
002: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000019999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020000
=================
003: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000029999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000030000
=================
004: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000030001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000030002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000039999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000040000
=================
005: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000040001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000040002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000049999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000050000
=================
006: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000050001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000050002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000059999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000060000
=================
007: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000060001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000060002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000069999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000070000
=================
008: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000070001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000070002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000079999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000080000
=================
009: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000080001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000080002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000089999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000090000
=================
010: 10000 files
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000090001
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000090002
...snip...
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000099999
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000
=================

Regards,
Alister
 

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