UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

HOW did it miss the purpose?

Sorry, I am trying to move file containing more than two hyphens - at the 3rd line of each files to a new directory as a try-out first. But the commands seemed to be also moving files less than two hyphens and it only moved 14 of them out of 600 thousands files. The folder is actually a "dict" folder. So, there's at least hundred of files containing less than two hyphens like killer.txt, teaser.txt, thriller.txt but it only move 14. [In other words, hyphens are to help me sort words that has different amount of sounds]

I worry the command might not be able to read my txt format. But, they are all openable in Terminal using cat

Is it possible that there are only 14 files out of 600000 whose file names start with "file"? That's what the OS selected based on the file* parameter to awk.

Try

Code:

awk 'FNR==3 {printf "mv %s %dH/\n", FILENAME, gsub ("-", "&") }' *

and pipe the result through sh, if happy. May be lengthy, though.

I think that make sense . I only seem to have 14 files that starts with "file".
I tried the command and I have this result. I probably have to use "for file in" or "find" [Sorry my coding knowledge is really bad..]

Code:

-bash: /usr/local/bin/awk: Argument list too long
-bash: /bin/sh: Argument list too long

Use smaller groups of files, e.g. aa*, ab*, ac*, etc. You can create these with nested for loops.

It looks like awk on OS X has a maximum number of open files (not counting standard input or standard output) of 17. I think we can create an awk script for you that will be able to create shell scripts that can move the files to separate directories fairly efficiently. But, to do that I need answers to a a few more questions:

@RudiC : You mean I should regroup them by moving into folders like aa, ab, ac and etc?

@Don Cragun : I have a word file named Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.txt which has 18 hyphens on third line

Code:

[noo-muh-noh-uhl-truh-mahy-kruh-skop-ik-sil-i-koh-vol-key-noh-koh-nee-oh-sis, nyoo-]  /ˈnu mə noʊˌʌl trəˌmaɪ krəˌskɒp ɪkˈsɪl ɪˌkoʊ vɒlˌkeɪ noʊˌkoʊ niˈoʊ sɪs, ˈnyu-/

I m not sure if other files also has more than 15. I can't seem to find a command that could search whether my files has more than 15 hyphens at 3rd line or not.

And the files have IPA alphabets and characters you'd mentioned like "$", <Double quotes>, "<", ">" and etc. Seems like it has almost all characters since its a dictionary folder

Fortunately, none of them are linked to one another. They are all individual txt files.

Targeted directories could be in same directories but there's no folders yet in that Folder. Probably have to mkdir