Move files from specifically named folders / move files up one level

Question

The goals is to move files out of the lowest level folder, back up one directory.

This does a great job but moves files higher up the folder hierarchy as well.

find . -name '*.jpg' -type f -execdir mv '{}' ../ \;

So if these jpgs were sat in a folder called 'photos', I want to move them up one level eg)

../

I've tried changing the '*.jpg' parameter to include the folder and tried using the folder instead of the dot after file. Also tried -maxdepth and -mindepth but they had no effect.

EDIT: This is for multiple folders i.e. it needs to recurse through an entire drive.

Answer 1

Move files from the lowest sub directory up one level

The script below searches a directory for the lowest sub directory (= without sub directories) recursively and moves all found files in the folder(s) up one level, as literally asked for in The goals is to move files out of the lowest level folder, back up one directory:

#!/usr/bin/env python2
import shutil
import os
import sys

directory = sys.argv[1] 

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for dr in dirs:
        dr = root+"/"+dr
        # find folders without subfolders (= lowest level)
        if len(next(os.walk(dr))[1]) == 0:
            # direct superior directory
            up = dr[:dr.rfind("/")]
            # move files from lowest level one level up
            for f in os.listdir(dr):
                shutil.move(dr+"/"+f, up+"/"+f)

To use:

1. Copy the script into an empty file, save it as reorganize.py

2. Run it by the command:

   python /path/to/reorganize.py <directory_to_reorganize>
   

   If the name of your directory (to reorganize) contains spaces, use quotes:

   python /path/to/reorganize.py '<directory_to_reorganize>'
   

---

EDIT

As mentioned in a comment, with a little change, the script can be used to only move files from a folder name up one level. The moste efficient way is to do that directly after

for dr in dirs:

Then the script would be:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import shutil
import os
import sys

directory = sys.argv[1]

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for dr in dirs:
        if dr == "<folder_name>":
            dr = root+"/"+dr
            # direct superior directory
            up = dr[:dr.rfind("/")]
            # move files from lowest level one level up
            for f in os.listdir(dr):
                shutil.move(dr+"/"+f, up+"/"+f)

Answer 2

The following will move all .jpg files to their respective parent directories if the .jpg files are only under the directory named photos (there can be multiple directory named photos):

find . -type f -path '*/photos/*' -not -path '*/photos/*/*' -name '*.jpg' \
-execdir mv -i {} .. \;

-path '*/photos/*' will ensure that the path will contain photos but the files can only be under the the photos directory (-not -path '*/photos/*/*').

Also note that, if the directories not to travel (not photos) are fixed and smaller in numbers or has specific patterns then you might be interested in -prune too.

Answer 3

If all your target files are in directories named photos, you could do something like:

find . -type d -name photos -exec bash -c 'cd {} && mv *jpg ../' \;

That will look for directories names photos, then launch a bash shell that will cd into each of them and move all .jpg files to the parent directory.

Answer 4

Will find the lowest level in every directory branch and use it as a base for your find and move '*.jpg' up one level.

#!/bin/bash

treedir="."
mapfile -d '' < <(find "$treedir" -depth -type d -print0)

L=""
A=()
for D in "${MAPFILE[@]}"; do
    [[ $L != $D/* ]] && A+=("$D"); L="$D"
done

for basedir in "${A[@]}"; do
    find "$basedir" -name '*.jpg' -type f -execdir mv -i -t .. '{}' \;
done