UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Creating the needed directories is no problem. They can easily be created on the fly as needed.

But... I still don't think I understand what you're trying to do.

The line you showed us above contains 20 hyphens, not 18. There are 18 hyphens before the 1st comma on that line. There are 19 hyphens between the [ and ] on that line. There are 20 hyphens on that line. You said you wanted to move files to a directory based on the number of hyphens on that line. Is there is different rule that describes which directory should get a file? Or, did you just miscount the hyphens on that line in your description above?

And please explain what: means. What does "the files have IPA alphabets" mean? I asked if your filenames contain any of the characters in the list $, ", ', and the <newline> character. I didn't ask if those characters appear in the file contents; I asked if they appear in any of your files' filenames. And, what is an "IPA alphabet"?

If your filenames contain <newline> characters, I need to completely rethink what I was planning to do. If your filenames contain <dollar-sign> characters or <double-quote> characters, I can use <single-quote> characters to delimit filenames passed to rm. If your filenames contain <single-quote> characters as well, you can use <single-quote>s to quote everything except <single-quote>s and use <double-quote>s to quote <single-quote>s. But, this is sounding more and more like a job than something that is fun to do as a forum volunteer.

For people reading this who don't understand why find -print0 and xargs -0 can't be used to solve this problem, those options do not exist in those utilities on OS X. And, even if it did:

Code:

xargs -I"{}" mv "{}" target_dir

only processes one file at a time and executing mv 690,000 times is going to take forever. And, mv on OS X doesn't have a -t target_directory option. And, even with the relatively large ARG_MAX limit of 262144 on OS X, it won't be possible to move all of the files for a single directory in a single mv command. So, this project requires implementing a simplified command-line argument aggregator (i.e., with a superset of a subset of xargs capabilities) that can construct mv command lines with multiple file operands followed by a fixed directory operand that xargs can't create. (This could be handled by a simple helper shell script, but only if the filenames do NOT contain any <newline> characters.)

Oh, sorry I kind of miscounted the hyphens and yes I was basically too focused just on the word that I forgot to count other hyphens on the line as well.
What I really wanted to do was to sort by hyphen between the first word of 3rd line which is inside []

And about the IPA characters/symbols, I don't think it matters as I didn't realise you were asking just for the file names. However, the file contents contains IPA symbols [International Phonetic Alphabet] like "æʊθʃŋː" to guide me to pronounce the words. For example, to pronounce apple, I refer to either [ap-uh l] OR /ˈæp əl/ written on the 3rd line of the file. Sorry, I guess I was kinda distracted in the morning as well.

Some of my file names include "!", ".", "+" instead of space. Other than that, it is all single lined file name. And there isn't any quotes.

Sorry I thought it would be simple to execute/manipulate commands to 3rd line in txt files but seems like I am in deep deep trouble for a beginner It doesn't have to be done as this is just one of my personal project I apologize for all the trouble caused

Thanks for the information. That helps a lot. I think I'll be able to pull something together this weekend that should work, but I still need a little more information.
P.S. I was wrong about find -print0 and xargs -0 on OS X (they are supported), but they won't help in this case. But the non-standard option that would really help here (mv -t destination_directory) is not available on OS X.

Thank you so much for very thoughtful questions. It makes it easier put into words now

Yes I would like to count hyphens just in between the [] on the 3rd line.

If the filename is just one word, I believe there will always be [] on 3rd line.

However, if that one worded filename's pronunciation has only one sound like kill, day, ball, and etc, there will be no hyphen in it.

For example,
kill.txt

Code:

****** kill1 ******

[kil]  /kɪl/
IPA Syllables

And filenames with more than one word like this will have no brackets and no hyphens on the 3rd line.

Like this,

cats and dogs.txt

Code:

****** cats and dogs ******
Slang definitions & phrases for cats and dogs Expand
**** cats and dogs ****
noun phrase
Low-priced stocks, such as those returning no dividends at all (1870s+ Stock market)
Related Terms
rain cats and dogs

So yes if there are still [] on the 3rd line but no hyphens, I would want to move it to 0H folder.

Those with 1 hyphen for 1H, and 2 for 2H, and so on.

But if there isn't any brackets at all, it would probably be left behind or put into unknown like you mentioned.

I think its best to verify if there's [ before counting hyphens as I believe there's many of [] beyond the 3rd line in some file.

OK. We're making progress, but I still don't have clear requirements. Please answer each of the following questions:

Yes I wanted [noo-muh-noh-uhl-truh-mahy-kruh-skop-ik-sil-i-koh-vol-key-noh-koh-nee-oh-sis, nyoo-] inside 18H, overlooking that there was one more - after the , . The files normally doesn't have , inside [] .
Initially I wanted to sort by the amounts of - in the first word inside [] on the 3rd line but it seems harder and harder. It's alright though. As long as the script move the file by the amount of - in [] be it at the 2nd word or more, I could still use it.

And yes if the file name is more than one word, there won't be [] on 3rd line, so no need to look at the contents of the file.
For files that do not have a space in the filename, verify that the 1st character on the 3rd line is a [ . And if it isn't, should be left behind as well.
Every file without [] on 3rd line should be left behind as 0H should only contain files that still has [] but no - on 3rd line.

The directory of the dictionary containing is this : /Users/Nexeu/Documents/Dict
And I wished to have targeted directory at /Users/Nexeu/Documents/Syllable/
Something like this

Code:

/Users/Nexeu/Documents/Syllable/0H
/Users/Nexeu/Documents/Syllable/1H
/Users/Nexeu/Documents/Syllable/2H

The number of hyphens in the 1st word is no problem as long as I know that is what you want.

I still have one unanswered question from question #2 in my last post: