Move sets of files with date encoded names

Question

I have a set of files that have dates in them.

lets call them:

 a20120528_120001.log
 b20120528_120003.log
 (name)(year)(month)(day)_(hour)(minute)(second).log

It is easy enough to move these two files simultaneously by doing:

 mv *20120528_12* file/

But now I have a situation where I want to move several hours worth of files in the same day ie:

 a20120528_120001.log
 b20120528_120003.log
 a20120528_130001.log
 b20120528_130003.log
 a20120528_140001.log
 b20120528_140003.log

Now if i wanted to transfer all of them i could just do the day:

 mv *20120528* file/

but what can I do if I only want to move hours 12 and 13, but exclude 14.

Please note this will need to be generic enough that i can input the date, because this will extend to be used across multiple days where there are 24 logs per day and several (between 3-8) will be excluded from each day.

How would I do this?

Answer 1

You can use ranges:

mv *20120528_1[23]* file/

For excluding everything from 3-8, go with the slightly more complicated:

mv *20120528_{0[0-29],[12]*}*

• [0-29] breaks down to the range 0-2 and 9.
• {A,B} expands to A or B.

Answer 2

This is a good question because in Bash, filename expansion uses only *, ?, and [. So you can deal with hours 12 and 13 only with the following:

[ab]20??????_1[23]????.log

Note that this takes you up to the year 2099 only; adjust accordingly if that bothers you.

But if you need a general range of values, you will need multiple commands. If you have hours 00 through 23 and you want to exclude 03 through 08, I think you will need the following:

[ab]20??????_0[0129]????.log
[ab]20??????_1?????.log
[ab]20??????_2[0123]????.log

Of course you can also write a script to generate the proper patterns, using something more complex than filename globbing. Not sure if you need that much complexity, though.