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I have a .txt file that has a list of folders I would like to move from one directory to another. I have seen many posts on this, but none have worked. Mostly because those are using GNU versions of mv and xargs. I found this post that is doing what I want but only in Linux. Currently, we are using the latest version of TrueNAS Core which is running FreeBSD version 12.2-RELEASE-p3

I tried using the code below, the folder names in the file have letters, numbers, spaces, (, and ):

while IFS= read -r file; do 
    mv Projects/"$file" Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020; 
done < Projects/Archive_List_test.txt

It gives me this output:

 to Archives/PROJECT ARCHIVE 2020/folder1: No such file or directory
: No such file or directoryE 2020/folder2

folder1 and folder2 are the folder names that are in the list. For my test, I only have 2 folders, but I actually need to move over about 360 folders

Thank you for your time.

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  • that overlap between the error message and filename indicates a carriage-return issue, see e.g. : unix.stackexchange.com/q/134695/170373 and askubuntu.com/questions/372672/…
    – ilkkachu
    Apr 2, 2021 at 16:07
  • Try quotes around "Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020" - notice you're not trying a drectory name "E", i.e,. one the "E" in on the filenames is creating the error "directoryE".
    – Cinaed Simson
    Apr 2, 2021 at 18:52
  • @CinaedSimson It looks like it gives me the same error.
    – laxer
    Apr 2, 2021 at 19:57
  • Okay, but you shouldn't put a slash and qutes. Where is the "read" command coming from? And are you sure the errors aren't coming from the "Projects/Archive_List_test.txt"?
    – Cinaed Simson
    Apr 2, 2021 at 21:27
  • Note that on Unix, BSD--and Linux, too--they are "directories" and not the Windows concept of "folders" which is not the same thing.
    – Rob
    Apr 3, 2021 at 11:01

1 Answer 1

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The script below seems to be working as expected. Let's test the folders below

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ls -la
total 32
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin    6 Apr  2 14:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin   12 Apr  2 14:06 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 admin  admin   16 Apr  2 14:18 Archive_List_test.txt
drwxr-xr-x  3 admin  admin    3 Apr  2 14:07 Archives
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin    4 Apr  2 14:19 Projects
-rwxr-xr-x  1 admin  admin  130 Apr  2 14:17 script.sh

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ls -la Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020 
total 1
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 admin  admin  3 Apr  2 14:07 ..

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ls -la Projects/
total 14
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin  4 Apr  2 14:19 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin  6 Apr  2 14:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:19 folder 1
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:19 folder 2

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ cat Archive_List_test.txt 
folder 1
folder 2

This script moves the folders, listed in file Archive_List_test.txt, from the directory Projects/ to the directory Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020/

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ cat script.sh 
#!/bin/sh
while IFS= read -r file; do 
    mv "Projects/${file}" Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020/; 
done <Archive_List_test.txt

admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ./script.sh 
admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ls -la Projects/
total 13
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:30 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin  6 Apr  2 14:15 ..
admin@truenas:~/tmp $ ls -la Archives/PROJECT\ ARCHIVE\ 2020 
total 2
drwxr-xr-x  4 admin  admin  4 Apr  2 14:30 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 admin  admin  3 Apr  2 14:07 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:19 folder 1
drwxr-xr-x  2 admin  admin  2 Apr  2 14:19 folder 2
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  • Thank you for responding! When I test out what you have I get the same error. Could it be because instead of folder1 and 2 it is actually like 13 folder test 1 and 14 folder (test) 2. Could those spaces be what is making it not be able to find the correct folders?
    – laxer
    Apr 2, 2021 at 21:44
  • You're welcome! Quote the source, e.g. "Projects/${file}". I've updated the answer.
    – Vladimir Botka
    Apr 2, 2021 at 21:52
  • unfortunately, it is not working for me. When I cat my Archive_List_test.txt file, at the end of it I am getting a random #. That is not in my file with the list of folders. Might I need to strip off some special characters or something?
    – laxer
    Apr 2, 2021 at 22:18

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