How can I rename files in recursive folders and the move the files all to one directory?

sofasurfer · 11-07-2021, 01:29 AM

I have 100 directories which are full of photos. There are also sub directories full of photos. I want to rename all photos with a number (example 1-10000) prefixed onto the current filename. Then I want all photos moved into one directory.
I tried krename and after I figured out its idiosyncrasies I found that it does not dig down into the recursive directories, unless I just haven't used it properly.
I can add directories into krename and it will process the files in it but if there is a sub directory in the directory it will not process the file in it.
Is there a solution here or a better software?
I managed to rename files in a directory with a command line script but when it comes to multiple directories and recursive directories its just too complicated for me at this time.

Turbocapitalist · 11-07-2021, 02:24 AM

You can use the perl version of the rename utility for that. See "man perlre"

Code:

rename -v -n '$a=sprintf("%05d",++$a); s/^/$a."-"/ex; s/old/new/g;' **/*/*.jpeg

# or 

find ./Pictures/ -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.raw' \) \
        -exec rename -v -n '$a=sprintf("%05d",++$a); s/^/$a."-"/ex; s/old/new/g;' {} +

Leave the -n there until it is displaying the result you want. The ** method requires globstar or the equivalent in your shell. Bash supports that, but not all the others do.

Then

Code:

find ./Pictures/ -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.raw' \) \
        -print

find ./Pictures/ -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.raw' \) \
        -exec mv -i -t /path/to/destination/ "{}" \;

Or at least that's how I would approach it.

syg00 · 11-07-2021, 04:06 AM

Stated another way - there are lots of opportunities to screw-up. See my sigline.

Scripting is the way to go, but you need to do all the sensible checks beforehand as demonstrated above.

MadeInGermany · 11-07-2021, 04:49 AM

Code:

find ./Pictures -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.raw' \) |
(
n=1
while IFS= read -r fn
do
  # newfn=/path/to/destination/${n}-${fn##*/}
  newfn=/path/to/destination/$(printf "%05d" $n)-${fn##*/}
  echo mv -vi "$fn" "$newfn"
  n=$((n+1))
done
)

This won't overflow if there were too many files.
Remove the echo if it looks good.

Turbocapitalist · 11-07-2021, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MadeInGermany

This won't overflow if there were too many files.

Good point, though I am always skeptical of changes to $IFS. I thought about the overflow problem but the method above seems to work with at least 30,004 files. How can the upper limit be estimated without a lot of fiddling?

allend · 11-07-2021, 08:41 AM

A bash solution.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

shopt -s globstar
topdir=$HOME
outputdir="/tmp"
p="0000"
i=1

cd $topdir
for f in **/*.{jpg,jpeg,raw}; do
 q=$p$i
 echo mv "$f $outputdir/${q: -5}${f##*/}"
 ((i++))
done

Remove the echo if it looks good.

On my system, the output of 'getconf ARG_MAX' is 2097152.

MadeInGermany · 11-07-2021, 10:17 AM

Suggestion for the loop body:

Code:

 printf -v q "%05d" $((i++))
 echo mv "$f" "$outputdir/${q}-${f##*/}"

boughtonp · 11-07-2021, 11:55 AM

If you have raw files with sidecar JPEGs, you need to keep the names matching - any script which simply loops and increments a counter doesn't do that.

To avoid collisions I use exiv2 to rename with the capture datetime prefixed to the existing name - unless you shoot with two cameras at the same time, that'll give you unique names without losing sidecar associations. (If you do concurrently use two cameras, you can probably get serial number from EXIF/IPTC to solve that.)