Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I am helping my dad with his computer and he has the messiest folder organisation imaginable.

Would it be possible to create a script which moves all images not in the Pictures folder to pictures, all documents not in Documents to Documents, videos to Videos etc?

But of course ignoring hidden directories as that would ruin settings!

From the home directory root because he sometimes saves files in the home root. And in folders in the Desktop.

Would it ignore links too? Like if I put links on his Desktop to Documents, Pictures etc I hope it wouldn't go through those because that would go on infinitely right?

I can't think of how to do it it seems quite complicated, but I think its probably simple compared to most of the questions you guys get

Just the basic structure I would like and I can add other file extensions myself if I find they are not being moved

This would be much appreciated thanks in advance!

People like him are the sort of folks desktop search was invented for, sadly, because they can't be cured. If you move his files on him, he will never be able to find them again.

He should not have permissions to write to the home directory root, you can fix that. ls -ld /home please.

Hehe I hope to try.

By root home directory I just meant his personal root home directory /home/username not /home. He saves things in username folder. His desktop has a whole new documents folder as well! I would never find anything on this computer!

I mentioned a script to organise to him and he seemed to like the idea, so I am hoping to try it anyway if anyone has any ideas

Code:

drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug  4 00:21 /home

What operating system is this? A linux distro?

Could start with something like this.

Code:

find ~/ -path '!' "/home/username/pictures' '!' -name '.*' -type f -name '*.[jJ][pP][gG]' |
while read FILE
do
        echo mv "$FILE" ~/pictures/
done

This is Linux Mint.

Thanks Corona that looks interesting, I seem to understand it too!

Do you need to repeat it for each extention?
*.[jJ][pP][gG] Or is that regex which can be made to include all picture types in the one line?

Would love to be able to come up with things like this so easily it seems fun and interesting Shame I don't have enough practical applications to warrant loads of study This is like the only script I have ever thought to use

I can't try this now because it is really late. Will let you know how I go tomorrow probably!

It's not a regex, it's a glob. You can put a bunch of different types in like this:

Code:

find ~/  otheroptions '(' -name '*.[jJ][pP][gG]' -o '*.[pP][nN][gG]' -o '*.[gG][iI][fF] ')'