Need to grep file with specific letter and move to another folder linux

Question

I need to select files which contain "Error" or "traffic" in their names, e.g.

abc_ERRor.csv
raError.csv
bsn_Error.csv
bbbctraffic.csv
ccc_traffic.csv
...

and move them into corresponding directories like Error_directory and traffic_directory according to their names.

I tried this but it didnt work

mv $(ls test_file | grep -l 'Error>' *) Error_directory

How can I do this with a bash command?

ls test_file | grep 'Error'

Answer 1

Parsing the output of ls is rarely a good idea due to the wide range of characters that can occur in file names. A better solution might be:

find ./test_file -iname "*error*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} mv {} Error_directory

Notice the -iname option. This will return case insensitive matches, allowing you to find and move files such as:

abc_ERRor.csv
error_123.csv
ErRoR_77.csv

If you don't need your search to be case insensitive, something as simple as this should suffice:

mv test_file/*Error* Error_directory

Further reading:

xargs separator problem

bash pitfalls

Answer 2

Another possible solution is:

#!/bin/sh

err_dir=~/errors
tra_dir=~/traffic

for f in *.csv; do
    case $f in
        *[Ee][Rr][Rr][Oo][Rr]*) mv -i $f $err_dir ;;
        *[Tt][Rr][Aa][Ff][Ii][Cc]*) mv -i $f $tra_dir ;;
    esac
done

Answer 3

You could use find:

find test_file -type f -name "*Error*" -exec mv {} Error_directory/ \;

where -type f denotes that you are looking for files, -name states that you are matching on the pattern given. exec runs the following command, with the {} taking the place of files that match the parameters given to find.

If you want to use bash and do something more along the lines of what you've tried, a loop should do the trick:

for f in `ls test_file | grep 'Error'; do
  mv test_file/${f} Error_directory
done

In both examples, I've assumed test_file is a directory containing the files you are interested in.

Answer 4

for fn in *.*; do for word in Error traffic; do echo "$fn" | grep -i "$word" && mkdir -p "$word"_directory && mv "$fn" "$word"_directory; done; done

Answer 5

ls | grep Error | xargs -I % mv % error-dir