Sorting Files into folders

petes

Quick one guys. Not sure if this can be done. Say I have a list of folders each with 4 to 5 sub folders. Then I have a lot of files in these directories with the subfolders. Is there anyway to automatically sort these files into the subfolders
by giving them certain criteria for all the parent directories. Not sure if I explained myself well there.

stevenmu

I suppose it depends on the criteria. If it's stuff like file size, type, date modified or certain characters in the name of the file you could use windows find to give you the listing, then cut and paste into where they're meant to be.

Capt'n Midnight

What OS ?

You are looking for a script - it all depends on the criteria , by name , type , date ., size or what ?

petes

server 2003 and sorted into each folder by name. e.g
Parent Directory


Folder1

SubfolderA
SubfolderB
SubfolderC

File1
File2
File3

There are hundreds of directories under the parent directory(folder1,folder2 etc)
Need to sort the files for each of these the exact same i.e File 1 goes into subfolder a, file 2 into b etc) All will be done with name as the criteria. Is this possible. Again I know in my head whats rewuired, its just putting it down.

Khannie

This is very possible.

I'm a perl man, so this is a 5 minute perl script which I will write for you if you have perl installed (or are willing to install it). The captain may know how to do it as a batch file or may know someone who can.

petes

Cheers Khannie. Perl is installed already.

Khannie

Ok, give me a concrete example of the files you want to work with then and I will write you the script.

like this if you can:

C:\parent\
C:\parent\subfolderA\
C:\parent\subfolderB\
C:\parent\fileA.txt
C:\parent\fileB.txt

where fileA.txt is to go into subfolderA, fileB.txt into subfolderB, etc.

petes

C:\Office
C:\Office\1000
C:\Office\1000\Correspondence
C:\Office\2000
C:\Office\2000\Correspondence
C:\Office\1000\Correspondance\1000corr.doc
C:\Office\2000\Correspondance\2000corr.doc


There are actually 2 subfolders. Hope this is clear enough.

Khannie

Yup, that's fine.

Just checking that you want to move

C:\Office\1000corr.doc
to
C:\Office\1000\Correspondance\1000corr.doc
etc.

Are they always 4 digits? e.g. 0001corr.doc up to 9999corr.doc?

I'm just trying to get exact pattern matches. That's the key here.

If you want to send me a full listing of the directory structure, do this:

start->run->cmd <enter>
in the command prompt:
cd C:\office
dir/s *.txt > files.txt
and email me the files.txt

If you're going to do this, I'll PM you my email address.

petes

The files are already in C:\Office\1000. A new folder is created under C:\Office\1000\ called correspondance and the files need to go in here. A simple matter for one folder but the folders range from 1000 to 9999. Thanks again.

Khannie

Here you go:

#FileToDir.pl
#usage: perl FileToDir.pl
use strict;

#get directory contents
opendir PWD, "." or die "Couldn't open the current directory. Check permissions.";
my @files = readdir(PWD);
closedir PWD;

#Sort by directory name
my $filename;

foreach $filename (@files)
{
	if (-d $filename && $filename ne "." && $filename ne "..")
	{
		my $docfile = $filename . "corr.doc";
		my $correspondance_dir = $filename . '\\Correspondance';
		if (-f ($filename . '\\' . $docfile) && -d $correspondance_dir)
		{
		print "moving $docfile to $correspondance_dir\n"; 
		    system 'move ' . $filename . '\\' . "$docfile $correspondance_dir";
		}
	}
}

__END__

copy and paste that into a file called FileToDir.pl, then cd into C:\office and run
perl C:\<pathtoperlscript>\FileToDir.pl and it'll do the rest for you.

I'd suggest making a backup copy of the directory first. I can't be held responsible for any screw ups (though I have tested this locally).

Best of luck!

Khannie

Did that work allright?

petes

Cheers for that. Will give that a go this morning.