Shell – How to move all files with a certain file extension from subdirectories to a single directory

filesrenameshell

I have a directory that contains many subdirectories. The subdirectories contain lots of types of files with different file extensions. I want to move (not copy) all the files of one type into a new directory. I need all these files to be in the same directory, i.e. it needs to be flat.

(My use case is that I want to move ebooks called *.epub from many directories into a single folder that an EPUB reader can find.)

Best Answer

In zsh, you can use a recursive glob:

mkdir ~/epubs
mv -- **/*.epub ~/epubs/

In bash ≥4, run shopt -s globstar (you can put this in your ~/.bashrc) then the command above. In ksh, run set -o globstar first.

With only POSIX tools, run find:

find . -name '*.epub' -exec mv {} ~/epubs \;

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Command Line – Moving All .txt Files to a New Directory

This would move all files with .txt and .txt.exe extensions present anywhere inside the current directory (even in subdirectories) to ~/Desktop/tmpremo.

$ sudo find . -type f \( -iname '*.txt' -o -iname '*.txt.exe' \) -exec mv {} ~/Desktop/tmpremo \;

If you want another extension too, just add -o -iname '*.extension' before the -exec.

PS: As @xenoid noted, please refrain from using sudo unless it is absolutely required for the task at hand.

Best Answer

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Command Line – Moving All .txt Files to a New Directory

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