Move files to different directories based on file name tokens

Question

I am looking to write a script to move files from a directory:

/home/mydir/

To another directory based on tokens in the file name. I have a bunch of files named as such:

red_office_mike_2015_montreal_546968.ext

or

$color_$location_$name_$year_$city_$numbers.extension (files will be various movie files: mov, mp4, mkv, etc.)

I would like the script to move the files to the following location:

/dir/work/$color/$name

Then verify the file has successfully copied, and delete the original file once it has.

I would also love it if the script would create the to directory if it does not already exist.

So in summary, I need a script to move files based on underscore separated tokens, create the to directory if it doesn't already exist, verify the successful copy (maybe with a size check), then delete the original file.

I am working on linux, and would prefer a bash script. The variables I have given are generic, and I will incorporate some other things to the script, I'm just looking for help on building the skeleton.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

It's not a bash script, but perl is much better at this kind of thing and is installed on all Linux systems

while(<>) {
    chomp;
    $file = $_;
    ($colour, $location, $name, $year, $city, $numbers) = split(/_/,$file);
    $dest0 = "/dir/work/$colour";
    $dest1 = "$dest0/$name";
    mkdir ($dest0) unless (-d $dest0);
    mkdir ($dest1) unless (-d $dest1);
    rename ($file, "$dest1/$file");
}

The script splits your input file on the underscore character, creates all the directories to the destination and then renames the file to the new filename. Rename takes care of all the copying and deleting for you. In fact it just changes the directory entries without any copying at all.

UPDATE

The above version takes its input from a file containing a list of filenames to process. For an alternative version which processes all files in the current directory, replace the while line with

while(glob("*")) {