What would be a good way to move a file type from a directory and all of its sub-directories?
Like "move all *.ogg in /thisdir recursively to /somedir". I tried a couple of things; my best effort was (still not that great):
find /thisdir -type f -name '*.ogg' -exec mv /somedir {} \;
It returned on each line before each file name,
mv: cannot overwrite non-directory `/thisdir/*.ogg' with directory `/somedir'
you can use find with xargs for this
find /thisdir -type f -name "*.ogg" -print0 | xargs -0 -Imysongs mv -i mysongs /somedir
The -I in the above command tells xargs what replacement string you want to use (otherwise it adds the arguments to the end of the command).
OR
In your command just try to move '{}' after mv command.
find /thisdir -type f -name '*.ogg' -exec mv -i {} /somedir \;
mv -i here, so you don't risk overwriting files if something unexpected happens.
– Gilles
Sep 3 '10 at 21:41
mv -t <targetdir> and + instead of \;
– user601
Sep 3 '10 at 22:29
find /thisdir -type f -name "*.ogg" -exec mv {} /somedir \;
You kinda interchanged the arguments for mv
In zsh or bash 4, to gather all *.ogg files into /somedir:
mv /thisdir/**/*.ogg /somedir
If you wanted to reproduce the directory hierarchy: (warning, typed directly into the browser)
rsync -a --prune-empty-dirs --include='*/' --include='*.ogg' --exclude='*' /thisdir /somedir
