Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all...

Here's my question:
-> considering i've got thousands of mp3s', named like "Artist name - Track Name", how could i write a shell (ksh, or bash my favorite, not knowinf enough any other language) that would create a directory (if not existing already) with the Artist's name, and move the corresponding files in it?
i've gave it a try with awk, but i can't get by the spaces in artists's name/track name...
And yes, another thing as soon as there are more than 2 songs of a same artist, create the directory..

Any suggestions would help!! A complet script would be ok, but help to build my one will be fine too!

Thanx all..


Jason

I have not tested this...

See this if it works for you

################################################

#!/usr/bin/ksh

MP3DIR="where your mp3 resides"

ls -1 $MP3 > tmpfile
awk -F"-" '{ print $1 }' tmpfile > tmpfile1
uniq tmpfile1 > tmpfile2

while read LINE
do
count=`find $MP3DIR -name "*$LINE*" -print | wc -l`
if [ $count -gt 1 ]; then
mkdir $MP3DIR/$LINE > /dev/null
mv $LINE* $MP3DIR/$LINE
fi
done < tmpfile2

rm -f tmpfile*

################################################

Thanx it seems to work!
I tested the first part (ie before the while loop), and that worked.
I didn't think of using tmp files, i tried to awk with the same options, working directly on the output of a ls -1:
ls -1 *.mp3 | awk -F"-" '{print $1}' as artists names. Any ideas why that won't work?

I dont see any reaon why this should not work.

See the sample run.

arfwsp04% ls -ltr
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 2 arbor arboradm 96 Apr 27 02:50 atr
drwxr-xr-x 3 arbor arboradm 96 Apr 27 07:21 atr_prod
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 149 May 11 00:23 data
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 5656 May 12 03:05 da_report
drwxr-xr-x 4 arbor arboradm 4096 May 13 01:25 final
drwxr-xr-x 2 arbor arboradm 96 May 13 01:33 tt
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 0 May 13 03:09 a-1.x
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 0 May 13 03:09 a-2.x
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 0 May 13 03:09 a-3.x
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 0 May 13 03:19 b1-1.x
-rw-r--r-- 1 arbor arboradm 0 May 13 03:19 b1-2.x
arfwsp04% ls -1 | awk -F"-" '{print $1}'
a
a
a
atr
atr_prod
b1
b1
da_report
data
final
tt


You say...you can do away with tempfiles...I will like to know..how will u do that..

Thanks
Rishi