Automating file transferring from multiple source folders to one target folder

Question

I need to move different files from different folders to a new folder using a command line. The files share the same format .asc: for example, there are files 20file1.asc, 20file2.asc and 20file3.asc existing in folder1, folder2 and folder3 respectively. I simply need to move the .asc from all folders to new folder which is folder4. Each folder is named following a yyyymmdd scheme.

Thanks

Answer 1

I would use simple script for that, like this one:

for x in {folder1,folder2,folder3}; do mv $x/*.asc folder4/; done

This script assumes you're in path that has folder1,folder2,folder3 in it. You can tune it up to your needs.

For all folders in specific place you can do:

ls -1 >> file
for x in `cat file`; do mv $x/*.asc folder4/; done

But be aware, that ls -1 will also contain files and if there are also files in that folder, you will get errors for these files, saying that path does not exist.

Answer 2

Assuming that all source folders are in the same directory path, you can use the following bash script:

ls -1 >> sources
for x in `cat sources`; do mv $x/*.asc target/; done
rm sources

Save it in your main folder with some name.sh, then run

$ sh name.sh

to get the job done automatically.