Recursively move files of certain type and keep their directory structure

Question

I have a directory which contains multiple sub-directories with mov and jpg files.

/dir/
  /subdir-a/  # contains a-1.jpg, a-2.jpg, a-1.mov
  /subdir-b/  # contains b-1.mov
  /subdir-c/  # contains c-1.jpg
  /subdir-d/  # contains d-1.mov
  ...         # more directories with the same pattern

I need to find a way using command-line tools (on Mac OSX, ideally) to move all the mov files to a new location. However, one requirement is to keep directory structure i.e.:

/dir/
  /subdir-a/  # contains a-1.mov
  /subdir-b/  # contains b-1.mov
              # NOTE: subdir-c isn't copied because it doesn't have mov files 
  /subdir-d/  # contains d-1.mov
  ...

I am familiar with find, grep, and xargs but wasn't sure how to solve this issue. Thank you very much beforehand!

Answer 1

It depends slightly on your O/S and, more particularly, on the facilities in your version of tar and whether you have the command cpio. It also depends a bit on whether you have newlines (in particular) in your file names; most people don't.

Option #1

cd /old-dir
find . -name '*.mov' -print | cpio -pvdumB /new-dir

Option #2

find . -name '*.mov' -print | tar -c -f - -T - |
(cd /new-dir; tar -xf -)

The cpio command has a pass-through (copy) mode which does exactly what you want given a list of file names, one per line, on its standard input.

Some versions of the tar command have an option to read the list of file names, one per line, from standard input; on MacOS X, that option is -T - (where the lone - means 'standard input'). For the first tar command, the option -f - means (in the context of writing an archive with -c, write to standard output); in the second tar command, the -x option means that the -f - means 'read from standard input'.

There may be other options; look at the manual page or help output of tar rather carefully.

This process copies the files rather than moving them. The second half of the operation would be:

find . -name '*.mov' -exec rm -f {} +

Answer 2

ASSERT: No files have newline characters in them. Spaces, however, are AOK.

# TEST FIRST: CREATION OF FOLDERS
find . -type f -iname \*.mov -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq | xargs -n 1 -d '\n' -I '{}' echo mkdir -vp "/TARGET_FOLDER_ROOT/{}"

# EXECUTE CREATION OF EMPTY TARGET FOLDERS
find . -type f -iname \*.mov -printf '%h\n' | sort | uniq | xargs -n 1 -d '\n' -I '{}' mkdir -vp "/TARGET_FOLDER_ROOT/{}"

# TEST FIRST: REVIEW FILES TO BE MOVED
find . -type f -iname \*.mov -exec echo mv {} /TARGET_FOLDER_ROOT/{} \;

# EXECUTE MOVE FILES
find . -type f -iname \*.mov -exec mv {} /TARGET_FOLDER_ROOT/{} \;

Answer 3

Being large files, if they are on the same file system you don't want to copy them, but just to replicate their directory structure while moving. You can use this function:

# moves a file (or folder) preserving its folder structure (relative to source path)
# usage: move_keep_path source destination
move_keep_path () {
  # create directories up to one level up
  mkdir -p "`dirname "$2"`"
  mv "$1" "$2"
}

Or, adding support to merging existing directories:

# moves a file (or folder) preserving its folder structure (relative to source path)
# usage: move_keep_path source destination
move_keep_path () {
  # create directories up to one level up
  mkdir -p "`dirname "$2"`"
  if [[ -d "$1" && -d "$2" ]]; then
    # merge existing folder
    find "$1" -depth 1 | while read file; do
      # call recursively for all files inside
      mv_merge "$file" "$2/`basename "$file"`"
    done
    # remove after merge
    rmdir "$1"
  else
    # either file or non-existing folder
    mv "$1" "$2"
  fi
}

Answer 4

It is easier to just copy the files like:

cp --parents some/folder/*/*.mov new_folder/

Answer 5

from the parent directory of "dir execute this:

find ./dir -name "*.mov" | xargs tar cif mov.tar

Then cd to the directory you want to move the files to and execute this:

tar xvf /path/to/parent/directory/of"dir"/mov.tar