Bash move files and rename it as username_filename in a different folder

Question

There are 4 user folders user1, user2, user3 and user4.

They all have music in their folder and I need to move these .mp4, .mkv and .mp3 files into the folder /tmp/Papierkorb

Also I need to rename it like, when user1 has a music file, it should change the name of the file into the name of the user_filename, from which user It comes from.

This is what I have now:

for file in $(find -type f -name *.mp3;find -type f -name *.mkv;find -type f -name *.mp4)
do
echo mv "$file" /tmp/Papierkorb$file;
done

This is what appears with echo:

root@ubuntu-VirtualBox:/home# bash script.sh 
mv ./user2/music/hits.mp3 /tmp/Papierkorb./user2/music/hits.mp3
mv ./user4/hits/music.mp3 /tmp/Papierkorb./user4/hits/music.mp3
mv ./user1/lied1.mp3 /tmp/Papierkorb./user1/lied1.mp3
mv ./user1/lied1.mkv /tmp/Papierkorb./user1/lied1.mkv
mv ./user1/lied12.mp4 /tmp/Papierkorb./user1/lied12.mp4
mv ./user1/1lied12.mp4 /tmp/Papierkorb./user1/1lied12.mp4
mv ./user3/test/meinealben/testlied.mp4 /tmp/Papierkorb./user3/test/meinealben/testlied.mp4

When I remove the echo, it says, that the folder after Papierkorb doesn't exist. I also don't know anything how I rename it into the name of the user, from which user the file comes from.

I assume that the error message is not Papierkorb does not exist, but Papierkorb. does not exist, with a dot at the end of the folder name. This can be fixed by adding a slash as in: /tmp/Papierkorb/$file. As for renaming files with username in them, I would rather use a separate folder for each user. — mouviciel
– mouviciel, Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 8:40
@mouviciel I did that, but there is also a dot somehow --- mv: cannot move './user2/music/hits.mp3' to '/tmp/Papierkorb/./user2/music/hits.mp3': No such file or directory — Martin2K02
– Martin2K02, Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 8:45
You have to create directories before moving files into them. Or you can move whole directories. More likely something in between: create user's directory, then move music and hits folders. — mouviciel
– mouviciel, Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 9:29
This is what I didn't wanted. I only need to move the files into that Papierkorb folder not their folders also. But I also realized later, that the folder got deleted while testing. — Martin2K02
– Martin2K02, Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 9:40

Fravadona · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-16 08:55:30Z

1

With find you can group the -name predicates and use the -exec ... {} + construct:

for user in user1 user2 user3 user4
do
    find "./$user" '(' -name '*.[mM][pP][34]' -o -name '*.[mM][kK][vV]' ')' -exec sh -c '
        for file
        do
            mv "$file" "$0${file##*/}"
        done
    ' "/tmp/Papierkorb/${user}_" {} +
done

Notes:

to make the code easier I used one find per username
the -exec sh -c '...' "/tmp/Papierkorb/${user}_" {} + is a little hackish but thanks to that you'll directly have value of /tmp/Papierkorb/${user}_ as $0 in the inline script

edited Jun 16, 2022 at 8:55

answered Jun 16, 2022 at 8:50

Fravadona

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3 Comments

Martin2K02 Over a year ago

find: paths must precede expression: `-' There is this error. Also where did you write it, that it should look for the music files mp3, mkv and mp4? Or is this code at find only for the name of the user?

Fravadona Over a year ago

There was a typo - o => -o; you tested the code before my edit

Martin2K02 Over a year ago

I realised the typo ^^ And also I now understand that mM,pP part and so on. So my question in the comments got answered. Thank you very much.

ufopilot · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-16 10:03:58Z

Using find and awk

#!/bin/bash

dir="/path/to/users"
# for all users
find "$dir" -maxdepth 2 -regex '.*\.\([mM][pP][34]\|[mM][kK][vV]\)'| \
awk -F/ '{print |"mv "$0" /tmp/Papierkorb/"$(NF-1)"_"$NF}'

# for some users
# using multiple find folders
find "$dir"/user1 "$dir"/user2 "$dir"/user3 -maxdepth 2 -regex '.*\.\([mM][pP][34]\|[mM][kK][vV]\)'| \
awk -F/ '{print |"mv "$0" /tmp/Papierkorb/"$(NF-1)"_"$NF}'

# using awk user filter 
find "$dir" -maxdepth 2 -regex '.*\.\([mM][pP][34]\|[mM][kK][vV]\)'| \
awk -F/ '/user1|user2|user3/ {print |"mv "$0" /tmp/Papierkorb/"$(NF-1)"_"$NF}'

# using awk condition
find "$dir" -maxdepth 2 -regex '.*\.\([mM][pP][34]\|[mM][kK][vV]\)'| \
awk -F/ '{if($(NF-1)=="user1" || $(NF-1)=="user2" print |"mv "$0" /tmp/Papierkorb/"$(NF-1)"_"$NF}'

Using find and xargs

find "$dir"/user1 "$dir"/user2 -maxdepth 2 -regex '.*\.\([mM][pP][3-4]\|[mM][kK][vV]\)'| \
xargs -i sh -c 'mv "{}" /tmp/Papierkorb/$(basename $(dirname "{}"))_$(basename "{}")'

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