[miykael]

I hope this is the right place for this question, but I need help with using Terminal on Leopard, latest version.

I need to move all files within a directory and its sub-directories into another directory, but without the sub-directories. Can someone please help me with the Terminal command to do this?

For example:

/Photos
/Photos/01 (50 jpgs)
/Photos/02 (75 jpgs)
/Photos/03 (50 jpgs)
/Photos/04 (50 jpgs)

Move into:

/New Photos (all 225 jpgs)

Thanks!

[parallax]

I'm moving this to Applications, but you can do

mv Photos/*/* New\ Photos

[besson3c]

parallax is right, but just FYI, you don't need help with Terminal. Terminal is a very simple application. What you need help with is the Unix environment accessible via the terminal.

[Curiosity]

Why do you need to use the Terminal to do that? Why not just open two Finder windows, one at New Photos, the other at 01, select all (Cmd-A), drag and drop into New Photos, repeat process with 02 to 04?

[besson3c]

Curiosity: because using the Finder involves several more steps?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Curiosity: because using the Finder involves several more steps?

More steps than posting the questions in a forum ?

-t

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Curiosity 

Why do you need to use the Terminal to do that? Why not just open two Finder windows, one at New Photos, the other at 01, select all (Cmd-A), drag and drop into New Photos, repeat process with 02 to 04?

I can't speak for Miykael, but it's entirely possible that we're actually talking about thousands of files in hundreds of folders. Rearranging a whole file tree by hand can be pretty tedious. I'd turn to the Terminal too.

[miykael]

Chuckit is bang on. I have thousands of photos in hundreds of directories that need to be moved to a single directory to run an exif program on. I haven't tried parallax's command yet, but will do that today.

Much thanks everyone! If it works, it will save my tons of time.

Plus, for Curiousity sake, I'd rather learn now so I can use it again later! =)

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by miykael 

Chuckit is bang on. I have thousands of photos in hundreds of directories that need to be moved to a single directory to run an exif program on. I haven't tried parallax's command yet, but will do that today.

Much thanks everyone! If it works, it will save my tons of time.

Plus, for Curiousity sake, I'd rather learn now so I can use it again later! =)

You DO know that there is NO undo for Terminal commands.

You better be sure of what you are doing.

-t

[miykael]

I didn't know that, but I'll back up everything first. They are my photos, and so I do backup regularly. Thanks for the tidbit. I am getting to love using the Terminal... just need more time and experience with it.

MacNN rocks.

[CharlesS]

Warning: composed in Safari, not tested. Run at your own risk. Back up first.

find /Photos -iname \*.jpg -exec mv {} /New\ Photos/ \;

edit: just tested it, and it seems to work. You should still back up first though.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Warning: composed in Safari, not tested. Run at your own risk. Back up first.

find /Photos -iname \*.jpg -exec mv {} /New\ Photos/ \;

edit: just tested it, and it seems to work. You should still back up first though.

find /path/to/Photos -type f -exec cp {} /path/to/New\ Photos/ \;

should also work with non jpg photos too (you can also substitute "mv" for "cp" if you'd prefer to move rather than copy)

[CharlesS]

That one will also pick up useless crap like the .DS_Store files, though. Mine should be good enough, since he mentioned that the pictures were jpgs. The cp command instead of mv might be safer, though, although if you back up first like I told you to, that won't be an issue.

[besson3c]

CharlesS: true

[Chuckit]

If you don't use the Terminal much, it's worth explaining a little bit:

CharlesS's command assumes that there is a folder at the root level of your main hard drive called "Photos", and it will move all files named <something>.jpg to another folder at the root level of your main hard drive called "New Photos".

Parallax's command will look for a folder called "Photos" in the directory you're currently in (in the Terminal), look for all that folder's subfolders, and move the contents of all those subfolders into another folder called "New Photos", also in the directory you're currently in.

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing, but there are some subtle differences there.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

CharlesS's command assumes that there is a folder at the root level of your main hard drive called "Photos", and it will move all files named <something>.jpg to another folder at the root level of your main hard drive called "New Photos".

Yeah, I was just going with the example directories the OP provided, /Photos and /New Photos. You'd want to replace those with the paths to the actual folders on your machine, of course.