tjluoma / move-all-by-ext

Move all files with a certain file extension to a specific folder.

move-all-by-ext

Move all files with a certain file extension to a specific folder.

Before Use

1. The user must indicate which folder s/he wants files moved to. By default it will be ~/Desktop/move-all-by-ext/ but this can be changed by editing the line which begins with MOVE_TO=

2. The user must indicate what file extension s/he wishes to search for. By default it will search for JPG but this can be changed by editing the line which begins with EXT=JPG

Usage

Usage is very simple. Just invoke move-all-by-ext.sh followed by the name of the folder that you want to search. For example, if you wanted to find all JPG files in ~/Downloads/ you would use

move-all-by-ext.sh ~/Downloads/

You can indicate several folders at once. Just separate them with a space.

move-all-by-ext.sh ~/Downloads/ ~/Desktop/

Notes

• Files will be matched regardless of case. For example, if you tell it to look for files which end with JPG it will find both 'FOO.JPG' and 'bar.jpg' or 'fuBar.JpG' as long as they are in the specified search folders. This is considered a feature.

• Extensions are matched exactly. So if you tell it to look for JPEG it will only find files which end with .JPEG or .jpeg but not .JPG. This is considered a feature.

• This script uses the Unix command find instead of Spotlight. This is considered a feature.

• The script will not overwrite files in the destination folder (MOVE_TO) by using the (OS X-specific) -n flag to the /bin/mv command. (The -i flag would be more 'portable' but that was not a priority for me.) Not overwriting files is considered a feature, but it should be noted that it is possible to run this script and for it not to move all matching files if moving one of the matching files would have resulting in overwriting existing files. The script does attempt to warn the user when that has happened by re-checking the search folder after moving files to see if any files still remain.

• This script will not tell the user when it did not find any matching files. This could be considered a bug by some, but if the point is to make sure that all matching files from one directory are moved to another, it seems like a fairly tame bug.

• This script uses the -exec flag in find rather than using xargs. This may be slightly less efficient, but it eliminates a potential point of failure and simplifies the core process, so this is considered a feature.

• This script does not check for permission to move files from A to B. The mv command is perfectly capable of informing the user if insufficient privileges are encountered.

Download and Installation

1. Download move-all-by-ext.sh and save it to your Desktop. (Optional: move it somewhere in your $PATH. But I'm going to assume that you aren't familiar with the Terminal/command line.)

2. In Finder, go to /Applications/Utilities and open the Terminal.app

3. Make the file "executable" by pasting this line into Terminal.app:

   chmod 755 ~/Desktop/move-all-by-ext.sh

4. Open the file in a text editor:

   open -t ~/Desktop/move-all-by-ext.sh

5. Edit the line MOVE_TO="$HOME/Desktop/$NAME" and change it to wherever you want the files to be moved to.

6. (OPTIONAL) If you want to look for files which end in something other than JPG then change the line EXT=JPG to EXT=foo where 'foo' is the extension you want to search for, such as GIF or DOC or PAGES. Note: DO NOT INCLUDE A PERIOD!

Good:

EXT=JPG 

Bad:

EXT=.JPG

Note that case does not matter. JPG=jpg=jPg=JpG etc

Be sure to save the file once you have made the changes mentioned in #5 and #6!

Then you are ready to search. Just tell the script where to search. For example, to search your "Downloads" folder, use:

~/Desktop/move-all-by-ext.sh ~/Downloads/

or

~/Desktop/move-all-by-ext.sh "$HOME/Downloads/"

See the 'Usage' section above for more options.

Background

This script was written as a response to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/90918/how-can-i-select-all-files-within-a-directory-with-subfolders.