Moving files to another directory outside starting path

[joeldebruijn]

Besides renaming files I'm experimenting with using F2 to move files to other folders (and migrate from Robobasket for Windows in the process).

The use case is a folder with a Camera roll and storing them somewhere else in ' daily folders' . The files are like this YYYYMMDD_hhmm,jpg

Example:

• Source is "20231007_065837.mp4"
• Target is a directory with a path in my home folder.

I tried this:

1. f2 -f '(\d{8})_(\d{6}).(jpg|mp4)' -r "/$home/S/Joel/Media/Fotos/$1/{f}{ext}" assuming I could use $home as a variable.
2. f2 -f '(\d{8})_(\d{6}).(jpg|mp4)' -r "/home/S/Joel/Media/Fotos/$1/{f}{ext}" assuming I could use /home as an absolute path.

Both times it creates a directorystructure /home/S/Joel/Media/Fotos/.../ WITHIN my cameraroll folder.

Is moving outside the current path possible or am I missing something?

[ayoisaiah]

Hi @joeldebruijn,

It's currently not possible but, this sounds like something that should be supported for sure and it should be straightforward enough to implement.

[joeldebruijn]

Thanks! For now I just sort within the starting path and move the resulting directories by hand once a week or so.

Maybe it needs some kind of flag to choose between relative and absolute paths?

[ayoisaiah]

@joeldebruijn Yes essentially a flag to specify a different root directory will do trick, but will explore other options too 🙂

[joeldebruijn]

I just read https://github.com/ayoisaiah/f2/wiki/F2-tutorial#integration-with-other-programs and ' piping' and make combinations with other programs. Could something like this work? Replace example is random. To move every matched file with its new filename in a new place?

f2 -f '{f}.{ext}' -r '{%03d}{ext}' | mv {%03d}{ext} $HOME/Test

[ayoisaiah]

What I could do is provide a flag that can help you execute a command on each renamed file. For example:

f2 -f '{f}.{ext}' -r '{%03d}{ext}' --cmd mv {} $HOME/Test

Where {} is the file path that was renamed.

I will also add the ability to use F2's output as an input to other programs. For now, you can only use the output of other programs as input to F2

[ayoisaiah]

@joeldebruijn You can do something like this now (see latest nightly release):

f2 -f 'master' -r 'main' -x --non-interactive | xargs -I {} mv {} dist/

The --non-interactive flag instructs F2 to print the renamed paths so that it can be used as input for a different program.

[joeldebruijn]

Will try and test! Thnx!

[ayoisaiah]

@joeldebruijn I needed this feature recently so I've now added a new --target-dir flag that allows you to specify a path to a directory that the files should be moved to. The path will be created if it doesn't exist already:

f2 -r '{x.cdt.YYYY}/{x.cdt.MM}-{x.cdt.MMM}/{x.cdt.YYYY}-{x.cdt.MM}-{x.cdt.DD}/{f}{ext}' -R --target-dir ~/Pictures/

*———————————————————————————————————*————————————————————————————————————————————————————————*————————*
|             ORIGINAL              |                        RENAMED                         | STATUS |
*———————————————————————————————————*————————————————————————————————————————————————————————*————————*
| DSC04798.ARW                      | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-29/DSC04798.ARW | ok     |
| DSC04798.JPG                      | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-29/DSC04798.JPG | ok     |
| DSC04801.ARW                      | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-29/DSC04801.ARW | ok     |
| DSC04801.JPG                      | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-29/DSC04801.JPG | ok     |
| _DSC1771.JPG                      | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-27/_DSC1771.JPG | ok     |
| birthday-2024/_DSC0430.ARW        | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-28/_DSC0430.ARW | ok     |
| birthday-2024/_DSC0430.JPG        | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-28/_DSC0430.JPG | ok     |
| birthday-2024/_DSC0433.ARW        | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-28/_DSC0433.ARW | ok     |
| birthday-2024/_DSC0433.JPG        | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-28/_DSC0433.JPG | ok     |
| family trip - berlin/_DSC1767.ARW | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/06-Jun/2024-06-27/_DSC1767.ARW | ok     |
| family trip - london/_DSC0092.JPG | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/05-May/2024-05-30/_DSC0092.JPG | ok     |
| family trip - london/_DSC0093.ARW | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/05-May/2024-05-30/_DSC0093.ARW | ok     |
| family trip - london/_DSC0093.JPG | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/05-May/2024-05-30/_DSC0093.JPG | ok     |
| my-wedding/DSC05194.ARW           | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/07-Jul/2024-07-02/DSC05194.ARW | ok     |
| my-wedding/DSC05194.JPG           | /home/ayo/Pictures/2024/07-Jul/2024-07-02/DSC05194.JPG | ok     |
*———————————————————————————————————*————————————————————————————————————————————————————————*————————*

In your original query, you would have done this:

f2 -f '(\d{8})_(\d{6}).(jpg|mp4)' -r "$1/{f}{ext}"  --target-dir ~/Joel/Media/Fotos/

[candrapersada]

how to remove old subdirectories aftars moved? --recursive

• windows 10

[ayoisaiah]

@candrapersada I added a --clean flag. Please download the latest nightly to try it out

[ayoisaiah]

@candrapersada That's what the --target-dir flag described above does.

[candrapersada]

what i mean is there any option to merge files from subdirectories into one folder without moving to new location and still in the same location in terminal