I have two directories - A and B - that contain a bunch of photo files. Directory A is where I keep photos long-term, and the files inside are sequentially named "Photo-1.jpg, Photo-2.jpg, etc.".
Directory B is where I upload new photos to from my camera, and the naming convention is whatever the camera names the file. I figured out how to run some operations on Directory B to ensure everything is in .jpg format as needed (imagemagik convert), remove duplicate files (fdupes), etc.
My goal now is to move the files from B to A, and end up with the newly-added files in A sequentially named according to A's naming convention described above.
I know how to move the files into A, and then to batch rename everything in A after the new files have been added (which would theoretically occur every night), but I'm guessing there must be a more efficient way of moving the files from B to A without re-naming all 20,000+ photos every night, just because a few new files were added.
I guess my question is two parts - 1) I found a solution that works (us mv to rename all photos every night), is there any downside to this? and 2) If there is a downside and a more elegant method exists, can anyone help with a script that would look at whatever the highest number that exists in A, then re-name the files, appending onto that number, in B as they are moved over to A?
Thank you!
This bash script will only move and rename the new files from DiretoryB into your DirectoryA path. It also handles file names with spaces and/or any other odd characters in their name in DirectoryB
#!/bin/bash
aPath="./photos-A"
bPath="./photos-B"
aPattern="Photo-"
lNum=$(find $aPath -type f -name "*.jpg" -printf "%f\n" | \
awk -F'[-.]' '{if($2>m)m=$2}END{print m}')
while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' photo; do
mv "$photo" "$aPath/$aPattern$((++lNum)).jpg"
done < <(find $bPath -type f -name "*.jpg" -print0)
The command to find the last numbered photo, aka $lNum will run over all 20K+ files, but it should be fairly quick. If it's not, you can always run this once and store the latest number into a file and read from that file.
$ tree photos-A/
photos-A/
├── Photo-1.jpg
├── Photo-2.jpg
├── Photo-3.jpg
├── Photo-5.jpg
├── Photo-6.jpg
├── Photo-7.jpg
└── Photo-8.jpg
0 directories, 7 files
$ tree photos-B/
photos-B/
├── bar.jpg
├── baz\ with\ spaces.jpg
└── foo.jpg
0 directories, 3 files
$ ./mvphoto.sh
$ tree photos-A/
photos-A/
├── Photo-10.jpg
├── Photo-11.jpg
├── Photo-1.jpg
├── Photo-2.jpg
├── Photo-3.jpg
├── Photo-5.jpg
├── Photo-6.jpg
├── Photo-7.jpg
├── Photo-8.jpg
└── Photo-9.jpg
0 directories, 10 files