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findapplescriptmove

Looking for an Applescript to find files and move them to different folder

I'm trying to find a script to find and move files to a different folder.

I've got a folder with hundreds pictures like this: 

PA-600-01.jpg, PA-600-02.jpg, PA-600-03.jpg, PA-600-04.jpg, PA-601-01.jpg, PA-601-02.jpg, PA-601-03.jpg, PA-602-01.jpg, PA-602-02.jpg, PA-602-03.jpg, PA-602-04.jpg, PA-602-05.jpg

I want to move all the pictures with PA-600 (so PA-600-01.jpg, PA-600-02.jpg, PA-600-03.jpg and PA-600-04.jpg) on a folder (new or already existing, the easier...) named PA-600, move all the pictures with PA-601 (PA-601-01.jpg, PA-601-02.jpg and PA-601-03.jpg) on a folder named PA-601, move all the pictures with PA-602 (PA-602-01.jpg, PA-602-02.jpg, PA-602-03.jpg, PA-602-04.jpg and PA-602-05.jpg) on a folder named PA-602... until PA-699

I tried to move a file but not a group of files:

tell application "Finder" make new folder at alias "Macintosh HD:Users:AirYoSo:Desktop:600-699" with properties {name:"PA-600"} copy file "Macintosh HD:Users:AirYoSo:Desktop:600-699:PA-600-01.jpg" to folder "Macintosh HD:Users:AirYoSo:Desktop:600-699:PA-600" end tell
Solution

  • No idea how to do it in applescript, but this is quite trivial to do in bash, which you have installed on your Mac:

    #!/bin/bash
for (( c=600; c<=699; c++ ))
do
  echo "Processing PA-$c"
  mkdir -p PA-$c
  mv PA-$c-*.jpg PA-$c/
done

    Save this to a file, for example script.sh, copy the file to the directory with your jpg files, and run it like this, in Terminal (replace /Users/lionel/files with the real path to your files):

    $ cd /Users/lionel/files 
$ bash script.sh