Linux – How to recursively copy all pdf files in a directory (and it’s subdirectories) into a single output directory

Here's one way: list all regular files, strip away the file basenames, and remove duplicates.

find . -type f | sed 's!/[^/]*$!!' | sort -u

If you want to strip the leading ./:

find . -type f | sed -e 's!/[^/]*$!!' -e 's!^\./!!' | sort -u

There is a great answer in the askubuntu-QA.

To do so, Open a terminal and execute this command:

mv  -v ~/Downloads/* ~/Videos/

It will move all the files and folders from Downloads folder to Videos folder.

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To Move all files, but not folders:

But, If you are interested to move all files (but not folders) from Downloads folder to Videos folder, use this command

find ~/Downloads/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t ~/Videos

To move only files from the Download folders, but not from sub-folders:

If you want to move all files from the Downloads folder, but not any files within folders in the Download folder, use this command:

find ~/Downloads/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t ~/Videos

here, -maxdepth option specifies how deep find should try, 1 means, only the directory specified in the find command. You can try using 2, 3 also to test.

See the Ubuntu find manpage for a detailed explanation.

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