How Can I Merge Multiple Directories into One

Question

I have multiple files in multiple folders under one directory that need to be in one folder. Is there a command line that can help me accomplish this?

Solution 1

Using find + xargs + mv:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I file mv --backup=numbered file .

This will move all the files in the current working directory and its subdirectories (recursively) into the current working directory, numbering files with the same filename numerically in order to avoid overwrites of files with the same filename.

Sample result on a tmp folder with a 1, 2 and 3 subfolders each containing a 1.ext, 2.ext and 3.ext file:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~/tmp$ tree
.
├── 1
│   ├── 1.ext
│   ├── 2.ext
│   └── 3.ext
├── 2
│   ├── 1.ext
│   ├── 2.ext
│   └── 3.ext
└── 3
    ├── 1.ext
    ├── 2.ext
    └── 3.ext

3 directories, 9 files
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/tmp$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I file mv --backup=numbered file .
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/tmp$ tree
.
├── 1
├── 1.ext
├── 1.ext.~1~
├── 1.ext.~2~
├── 2
├── 2.ext
├── 2.ext.~1~
├── 2.ext.~2~
├── 3
├── 3.ext
├── 3.ext.~1~
└── 3.ext.~2~

3 directories, 9 files

Solution 2

If your directory structure looks like

dir root

• dir A
  • file a
  • file b
• dir B
  • file c
  • file d

and so on

you can do a simple

mv **/* .

to move all files at depth 1 to the root dir. Simple and Elegant!

Comments

[Admin]

Give us some more hints..do you want to move all files in all subdirectories inside a directory?, or the directories are randomly located (how to find them?), do you want to move specific files or all of them inside the directories? also do you want to move them to a existing directory or a new directory?

[Admin]

I'm not sure how to make the question simpler, but I'll give it a shot. There are over 50 folders (all containing files) that I need merged into one.

[Admin]

Are these folders distributed randomly or under the same directory? if distributed randomly then do they contain a pattern in their names (how to find them)? if under the same directory then does the directory contain any other file/directory that needs to be excluded?

[Admin]

All under one directory, no other files or folders to be excluded.

[Admin]

unix.stackexchange.com/questions/52814/…

[Luc]

Does the double asterisk do anything different from a single one?

[Trect]

rsync is much better

[Cron Merdek]

This looks good, but I run into mv: cannot move <PATH>: Directory not empty

[Paul Rougieux]

To keep the extension at the end (many programs use the extension to recognize files) you can rename the files in another step with: rename 's/((?:\..+)?)\.~(\d+)~$/_$2$1/' *.~*~