Looking for a script/tool for moving files and subfolders to directory by year

Question

I got a lot of data over the years, and I'm looking for a tool that can get a folder name and then move all the files to subfolders by year, like:

2005
2006
2007
etc..

Anyone knows something or similar tool?

Answer 1

Save this text into a file (sort.py) and run it:

./sort.py src-dir/ dst-dir/

It loops through the source directory, gets the mtime of all files and folders, and moves them to the destination directory. Note: It's not recursive! Use it at your own risk!

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*-


import os
import sys
import shutil
from datetime import date

# Check arguments
if len(sys.argv) > 2:
    src = sys.argv[1]
    dst = sys.argv[2]
else:
    print "Arguments: ./sort.py [src] [dst]"
    sys.exit(1)

# Check paths
if not os.access(src, os.R_OK):
    print "Source path not found"
    sys.exit(2)

if not os.access(dst, os.W_OK):
    print "Destination path not found"
    sys.exit(3)

# Start sorting from root
for f in os.listdir(src):
    fpath = os.path.join(src, f)
    mtime = os.stat(fpath).st_mtime
    year = str(date.fromtimestamp(mtime).year)
    ypath = os.path.join(dst, year)
    if not os.access(ypath, os.W_OK):
        os.mkdir(ypath)

    print "Moving %s to %s" % (fpath, ypath)
    shutil.move(fpath, ypath)

Answer 2

A solution using bash.

Save the following script to ~/my-script

#!/bin/bash

dst="$1"
shift

for f; do
  year=$(stat -c '%y' "$f" | sed 's/-.*//')
  ext=$(sed 's/.\+\.//' <<<"$f")
  ext=
  [[ $ext == $f ]] && ext=
  dir="$dst/$year/$ext"
  mkdir -p "$dir"
  cp --backup=numbered "$f" "$dir"
done

make it executable, then run

find /path/from -type f -exec ./my-script /path/to {} +

where /path/from and /path/to should be replaced with source and destination directories. For example, supposing all you data are in you home, you can execute

find $HOME/* -type f -exec ./my-script $HOME/DocumentsByYear {} +

where ~/DocumentsByYear and all subdirectories will be create as needed. I put as source path $HOME/* to avoid hidden files.

If you comment the line with ext=, you will obtain, in each year subdirectory a further classification by file extension.

The script take care of name clashes with the backup feature of cp command.