Shell Programming and Scripting

alister is correct.
The command needed the "or" condition to be in escaped brackets.:

Code:

find /usr/bin/sou/ -name \( "*.txt" -o -name "*.csv" \) | xargs -I {} mv '{}' /usr/bin/sou/temp/

Ps. I can't verify that "xargs" command but it looks unlikely.

When find parses it arguments, everthing that follows the last pathname argument (/usr/bin/sou/) is a primary argument (-name, -type, -exec, and so on). Each primary argument is a term in a boolean expression. In that expression's grammar, the logical AND operator (-a) has higher precedence than the logical OR operator (-o). When two primary arguments are not the operands of either -a or -o, -a is implicitly assumed.

Starting with your original command:

Code:

find /usr/bin/sou/ -name "*.txt" -o -name "*.csv" -exec  mv {} /usr/bin/sou/temp/ \;

Adding the implicit AND operator:

Code:

find /usr/bin/sou/ -name "*.txt" -o -name "*.csv" -a -exec  mv {} /usr/bin/sou/temp/ \;

Since -a is higher precedence than -o, the equivalent with precedence made explicit:

Code:

find /usr/bin/sou/ -name "*.txt" -o \( -name "*.csv" -a -exec  mv {} /usr/bin/sou/temp/ \; \)

As you can now see, find will only mv the file if the basename matches *.csv. Note that nothing at all will happen when the basename matches *.txt. The -exec will not occur and since there's an -exec in the expression, find will not perform an implicit -print.

What you meant to do:

Code:

find /usr/bin/sou/ \( -name "*.txt" -o -name "*.csv" \) -exec  mv {} /usr/bin/sou/temp/ \;

And even then, that may not be correct. The original post's attempt suggests that descending into subdirectories is not desired. If that's the case, this find command is still not adequate.

Regards,
Alister

all the files are moving including subdirectiores files also.how can i ll move only files present in the directory to one specified subdriectires which not move the files present in the other subdirectories

By not using find... e.g. post #22
post#23:
How did you copy/paste? using a PC with windows? saved e.g. with notepad and transfered to unix?