How to "squeeze" directory levels

Question

I have data files buried in deep directory structures for a lot of IDs like:

ID1/a/b/c/data1
ID1/d/e/data2
ID1/f/g/h/i/data3

ID2/j/data1
ID2/k/l/m/data2

ID3/m/n/data1
ID3/o/data2
ID3/p/q/r/s/t/u/data3
ID3/v/w/data4
ID3/x/y/z/data5
...

Is there a convenient way to "squeeze" those directories so that data files are put immediately under each IDs? Like:

> ls ID1
data1 data2 data3

> ls ID2
data1 data2

> ls ID3
data1 data2 data3 data4 data5

Answer 1

You could use a pattern similar to this:

find ID1/*/ -type f -exec mv -t ID1 {} +

ID1/*/ — look in all directories of ID1

-type f — look only for files

-exec mv -t ID1 — invoke mv on found files and move them to the ID1 directory

{} + — find will replace these args with the names of the files when it invokes mv

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In a loop to cover all directories:

for dir in ID*/ ; do
    find $dir/*/ -type f -exec mv -t $dir {} +
done

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Note: whitespace in directory names will require a different solution.