Fast processing(mv command) of 1 million+ files using find, mv and xargs Post: 302789043

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Fast processing(mv command) of 1 million+ files using find, mv and xargs Post 302789043 by agentgrecko on Wednesday 3rd of April 2013 02:15:58 AM

04-03-2013

Registered User

Fast processing(mv command) of 1 million+ files using find, mv and xargs

Hi, I'd like to ask if anybody can help improve my code to move 1 million+ files from a directory to another:

Code:

find /source/dir -name file* -type f | xargs -I '{}' mv {} /destination/dir

I learned this line of code from this forum as well and it works fine. However, file movement is kinda slow; about 1-2 files per second. At this rate, it may take days to move the files. I have not much background yet about xargs, so I was wondering if there could be a faster way to accomplish this process.

Here are some more details:
-OS is HP-UX.
-The files in /source/dir are continually being added.
-Size per file is around 300-1000kb.
-Filename pattern includes YYYYMMDD date (might prove useful for batch processing).
-The mv* command is already encountering "arg list too long," hence the use of find/xargs.
-/source/dir has no sub directories.
-After moving the files, I would later divide/mv then into different dirs corresponding to their YYYYMMDD date.

Hope the above info helps. Any advise would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thank you.

agentgrecko

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whereis

whereis(1) General Commands Manual whereis(1)

Name
whereis - locate source, binary, and or manual for program

Syntax
whereis [-sbm] [-u] [-SBM dir... -f] name...

Description
The command locates source/binary and manuals sections for specified files. The supplied names are first stripped of leading pathname com-
ponents and any (single) trailing extension of the form ``.ext'', for example,``.c''. Prefixes of ``s.'' resulting from use of source code
control are also dealt with. The command then attempts to locate the desired program in a list of standard places.

Options
-S dir
Search for source files in specified directory.

-B dir
Search for binary files in given directory.

-M dir
Search for manual section files in given directory.

-b Searches only for binary files.

-f Terminates last directory list created from use of -S, -B or -M flags and signals the start of file names.

-m Searches only for manual section files.

-s Searches only for source files.

-u Searches for files that do not have one of binary, source or manual section files. A file is said to be unusual if it does not have one
entry of each requested type. Thus ``whereis -m -u *'' asks for those files in the current directory which have no documentation.

Examples
The following finds all the files in which are not documented in with source in
cd /usr/ucb
whereis -u -M /usr/man/man1 -S /usr/src/cmd -f *

Restrictions
Since the program uses to run faster, pathnames given with the -M -S and -B must be full. That is, they must begin with a ``/''.

Files
/usr/src/*
/usr/{doc,man}/*
/lib, /etc, /usr/{lib,bin,ucb,old,new,local}

whereis(1)