On 2/28/06, Paul Howarth <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 22:01 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > On 2/28/06, Paul Howarth <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 09:26 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > > > I am trying to learn as I go with bash on a FC4 install. I need to do
> > > > two things that are confounding me:
> > > >
> > > > 1) I need to move all the photos from a huge, complex tree to one big
> > > > directory. Easy:
> > > > $ find . -name "*.jpg" -exec mv '{}' /home/dotancohen/big_directory \;
> > > > However, there are a few photos that have duplicate file names in
> > > > different directories. In this case, it overwrites. That is bad! I
> > > > tried adding the -i flag to prompt me, but it takes the next 'mv' as a
> > > > response to the prompt, and the next 'mv' fails. Is there a way to
> > > > have it not fail the next mv, yet not overwrite? Or better yet, in the
> > > > case of duplicate file names, to append something to the end of the
> > > > file name, so that it will not be duplicate? Of course, if _that_ file
> > > > name is taken, it should append something else, etc. Is this too
> > > > complex for Bash?
> > >
> > > find . -name "*.jpg" -exec mv --backup=numbered \
> > > '{}' /home/dotancohen/big_directory \;
> > >
> > > > 2) I will then be left with a huge tree with mostly empty directories.
> > > > I need to remove the empty directories, but leave those in place that
> > > > do contain files. Is there a way to check if a directory is populated
> > > > before 'rm'ing it? If the directory contains another directory that
> > > > _is_ empty, then of course they should both be deleted. Er, is this
> > > > possible?
> > >
> > > find . -depth -mindepth 1 -type d \
> > > -exec rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty '{}' \;
> > >
> > > Paul.
> > >
> >
> > Thanks, Paul. Although "man mv" describes ---backup=numbered as doing
> > what I had described, in this case it overwrites! I just tried it with
> > the code that you provided (in case I was doing something syntaxly
> > wrong), however, it did overwrite!
> >
> > For some reason, instead of giving numbered backups, it overwrites. Is
> > this a bug?
>
> There's certainly something strange going on there, as it certainly
> worked for me when I tested it before posting.
>
> As useful way of trying to debug find commands is to put "echo " in
> front of the command you're trying to run, e.g.
>
> find . -name "*.jpg" -exec echo mv --backup=numbered \
> '{}' /home/dotancohen/big_directory \;
>
> and that should list of commands that you could try one at a time to see
> what's going on.
>
> Paul.
>
Thank you Paul. I appreciate your time in writing and testing the
code. That is real dedication!
I will play with the echo command that you suggest. Some googleing led
me to beleive that I would be better off trying to learn perl than
bash, if moving and parsing files is what I expect to be doing mostly.
I'm no syadmin, just a home user.
Thank you.
Dotan Cohen
