Copy and rename file

Question

The structure of my files is as follows:

My_Files:
        |-- Folder_1: 
        |           |-- a.txt
        |           |-- b.txt
        |           |-- c.txt
        |
        |-- Folder_2:
                    |-- a.txt
                    |-- b.txt

I have about 200 folders like this.

What I Want:

I want to copy my files and rename files of the same name into one folder such as this:

Final_Folder: 
            |-- a.txt
            |-- b.txt
            |-- c.txt
            |-- a1.txt (Renamed)
            |-- b1.txt (Renamed)

What I did:

I used from this command but no result found:

find My_Files/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 cp -t Final_Folder/

and the output is as follow:

cp: will not overwrite just-created 'Folder_1/a.txt' with 'Final_Folder/a.txt'

cp: will not overwrite just-created 'Folder_1/b.txt' with 'Final_Folder/b.txt'

cp: will not overwrite just-created 'Folder_1/c.txt' with 'Final_Folder/c.txt'

cp: will not overwrite just-created 'Folder_2/a.txt' with 'Final_Folder/a.txt'

cp: will not overwrite just-created 'Folder_2/b.txt' with 'Final_Folder/b.txt'

How can I reach my goal?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Given your scheme, and assuming Folder 1, Folder 2, Folder 3 etc. actually do hold some meaning (otherwise you can just append the current timestamp to every filename you have to avoid the problem you are getting), I would go with the following command (make sure the folder Final_Folder exists beforehand) :

find . -path ./Final_Folder -prune -o -type f -exec sh -c 'fn=$(basename -- {}) ; suffix=$(dirname {} | tr / _  ) ; cp {} ./Final_Folder/${fn%.*}$suffix.${fn##*.};   ' \;

---

the file-naming scheme will follow a scheme like this:

[basename filename]._[basepath folder 1]_[basepath folder2]_[basepath folder[3..n].[extension]

or in other words, the Final_Folder contents will be:

a._Folder_1.txt
a._Folder_2.txt
a._Folder_3.txt
b._Folder_1.txt
b._Folder_2.txt
b._Folder_3.txt
c._Folder_1.txt
c._Folder_2.txt
c._Folder_3.txt

The nice thing about this scheme is that if your hierarchy for example resembles:

[YEAR]/[MONTH]/[DAY]/[filename a,b,c].txt

as is often done for data collection

if you run the above command from the top level directory your filenames from today copied into the Final_Folder would be named:"

a._2019_11_10.txt
b._2019_11_10.txt
c._2019_11_10.txt
.
.
.
[a,b,c]._2019_11_10.[WITH OTHER EXTENSIONS]

and sorting, pulling or analyzing files of specific type, or name, or from a given year,month, or day and so on would be a very simple thing to do.