I have a directory that I am trying to clean out that contains both files and subdirectories. What I am trying to do is simple: move all the files into another directory, but leave all the sub-directories as they are.
I am thinking something like:
mv [*_but_no_dirs] ./other_directory
It seems like there should be a simple way to do this with wildcards * and regex...
Anyone have ideas?
Regex aren't involved here. Wildcards in bash (like most other shells) only match files based on the file names, not based on the file type or other characteristics. There is one way to match by type: adding / at the end of the pattern makes it only match directories or symbolic links to directories. This way, you can move directories, then move what's left, and move directories back — cumbersome but it works.
tmp=$(TMPDIR=.. mktemp -d)
mv -- */ "$tmp"
mv -- * "$tmp"/other_directory/
mv "$tmp"/* .
rmdir "$tmp"
A standard way to match files by type is to call find.
find . -name . -o -type d -prune -o -exec sh -c 'mv "$@" "$0"' other_directory/ {} +
In zsh, you can use glob qualifiers to match files by type. The . qualifier matches regular files; use ^/ to match all non-directories, or -^/ to also include symbolic links to directories.
mv -- *(.) other_directory/
In any shell, you can simply loop.
for x in *; do
if ! [ -d "$x" ]; then
mv -- "$x" other_directory/
fi
done
You could use something like
find . -maxdepth 1 \( ! -type d \) -exec sh -c 'mv "$@" MYDIR' _ {} \;
First we use find to look only within the current directoy, then we ignore directories by using ! -type d finally we execute sh and move everything to the destination dir. You might try {} + at the end which will be faster.
-exec sh -c 'mv "$@" MYDIR' _ {} \; rather than -exec mv {} MYDIR \;? Just to get something that can be streamlined by changing the \; to a +? You can do that with the -exec mv -t MYDIR {} + form.
– Scott
Jul 29 '14 at 19:20
-t flag. I also explained in the answer that the + is faster but not all find versions support it. So the above code is pretty much compatible with any find or shell that is used.
– Valentin Bajrami
Jul 29 '14 at 19:58
find or shell that is used.” True, but so is find … -exec mv {} MYDIR \;, and that uses less resources than … -exec sh -c 'mv "$@" MYDIR' _ {} \;.
– Scott
Jul 29 '14 at 20:14
It's potentially a bit dangerous but
cp * destination/
rm *
As both cp and rm won't operate on directories without the -r switch.
I would suggest simply doing mv *.* destination/ with destination/ being the folder you are moving to.
*.* will move some directories and leave some files, which is not what the asker wanted.
– dave_thompson_085
Dec 3 '16 at 5:18
mv $(ls -l | grep "^-" | awk '{print $9}') ./folder_where_move
mv **/*(.) ./other_directory- with bash you'd need to resort to external commands likefind, though. – godlygeek Jul 29 '14 at 18:47