Linux find files with similar name and move to new directory [closed]

Question

Say I have an unorganized directory with thousands of files that have prefix in their names like abc-tab, abc-vib, h12-123, h12-498.... How do I move files with the same prefix into their own directory?

I was thinking about using something like

find . -path '*/support/*abc*' -exec mv "{}" /new/abc\;

But this means I will have to retype the command for every prefix.

Answer 1

Grab all the prefixes with ls and uniq to get a single list, then move the files using a for loop.

for F in $(ls | cut -d- -f1 | uniq); do
    mkdir "${F}" && mv "${F}"-* "${F}"
done

Many people learn shell scripting from the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide. Check out the cut and uniq man pages for details on those programs.

Answer 2

I'd use a for loop to operate on each instance of each filename.

From within the directory containing the files:

    mkdir newfolder

    for i in prefix_*
    do
       cp $i newfolder/$i
    done

Then I'd check that the right files copied over, and if so run

    rm prefix_*

The more dangerous approach would be to run

    mkdir newfolder

    for i in prefix_*
    do
       mv $i newfolder/$i
    done

But mv will automatically remove the source files, and I like to ensure the correct actions happened before that.