Using a CSV file to move files to different directories

Question

I have this large directory of 1000+ files from a machine learning dataset, but these files have different qualities (pictures of roses vs. daises to keep it simple). I have this CSV file with the filenames of each of these items in the dataset as well as their categorization (roses vs. daisies). How can I read this CSV file and tell my file manager to move all of the rose photos to one directory and all of the daisy photos to another directory? Would I need to use a Bash script, or is this something that's already built into Nautilus?

Answer 1

Here is a bash script that should do what you want:

#!/bin/bash

fileNameIndex=0   # set to index of file name
categoryIndex=1   # set to index of category

IFS=",""$IFS"     # add comma to break lines at commas

while read -a tokens;    # read a line and break it into tokens separated by commas
do
    file=${tokens[$fileNmeIndex]}       # get the file name
    category=${tokens[$categoryIndex]}  # get the category
    if [ ! -d $category ]; then         # check if the category directory exists
        mkdir $category;                # make the category directory
    fi
    mv $file $category                  # move the file into the category directory
done

Save this script in a file, perhaps do_moves.sh, edit it to set the correct values for fileNameIndex and categoryIndex, then run it as:

./do_moves.sh < data.csv

where data.csv is your CSV file. Make sure that you do not have any files that have the same name as a category before you run this.

Answer 2

Alright, a friend and I managed to write a script in Python that solved this quite well.

# Import csv
import csv
# Import os
import os

# Main Function
def main():
# Open dataset file
dataset = open('dataset.csv', newline='')

# Initialize csvreader for dataset
reader = csv.reader(dataset)

# Read data from reader
data = list(reader)

# Variables for progress counter
lines = len(data)
i = 0

# Analyze data in dataset
for row in data:
    # Assign image name and state to variables
    image = row[0] + '.jpeg'
    state = row[1]

    # Print image information
    print('({}/{}) Processing image ({}): {}'.format(i + 1, lines, state, image))

    # Increment i
    i += 1

    # Determine action to perform
    if state is '0':
        # Attempt to move the file
        try:
            # Move the file to nosymptoms/
            os.rename(image, 'nosymptoms/' + image)
            # Inform the user of action being taken
            print(' -> Moved to nosymptoms/')
        except FileNotFoundError:
            # Inform the user of the failure
            print(' -> Failed to find file')
    elif state in ['1', '2', '3', '4']:
        # Attempt to move the file
        try:
            # Move the file to nosymptoms/
            os.rename(image, 'symptoms/' + image)
            # Inform the user of action being taken
            print(' -> Moved to symptoms/')
        except FileNotFoundError:
            # Inform the user of the failure
            print(' -> Failed to find file')

# Execute main function if name is equal to main
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

This tended to work better because I had more categories to deal with...hopefully this will work for anyone with the same problem.