Question

#!/bin/sh
#My script

echo "Are you sure you want to reorganize your files?"
echo "Type y or Y to continue. Anything else will stop the process"
read response

if [ "$response" = "y" ] || [ "$response" = "Y" ]; then
  mkdir video
  mkdir audio
  mkdir text
  mv -v *.txt text >> log.txt
  mv -v *.wmv video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mov video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mpg video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mp3 audio >> log.txt
  mv -v *.wma audio >> log.txt


  echo "Yay, it worked!"
else
echo "Nothing happened."
fi

I wrote the script above to organize files into subfolders. For instance the music files will go into an audio folder. Now I would like to take a step further and make it more global.I would like to allow the script to accept a command line argument, which is the folder that contains the unorganized files. This should allow the script to be located and run from anywhere in the file system, and accept any folder of unorganized files.

Example:

organizefiles.sh mystuff/media // subfolders would go inside “media”

the folder media contains all of the media files.

Thank you!

Answer 1

A portion of your script could use the first positional parameter like this:

if [ -d $1 ]
then
    mkdir video
    mkdir audio
    mkdir text
    mv -v $1/*.txt text >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.wmv video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mov video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mpg video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mp3 audio >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.wma audio >> log.txt
else
    echo "The destination directory does not exist"
    exit 1
fi