Shell Programming and Scripting

#!/bin/sh

DESTINATION=/tmp
for file in *; do
        first=`echo $file | cut -c 1`
        if [ ! -d "$DESTINATION/$first" ]; then
                mkdir -p $DESTINATION/$first
        fi
        mv $file $DESTINATION/$first/
done

#!/bin/sh

# Get the files
FILES=`ls -1`

for FILE in $FILES
do
    # Get the position of the .
    INDEX=`expr index "$FILE" .`

    # need to subtract 1 (you don't want the .) 
    INDEX=`expr $INDEX - 1`

    DIRNAME=`expr substr $FILE 1 $INDEX`

    if [ ! -d "destination/$DIRNAME" ]; then
        mkdir -p "destination/$DIRNAME"
    fi

    mv $FILE "destination/$DIRNAME"
done

INDEX=`expr index "$FILE" .`

first=`echo $file | cut -c 1`

INDEX=${FILE%.txt}

first=${file%.txt}