Question

I have a main folder “Abc” which has about 800 sub-folders. Each of these sub-folders contains numerous files (all of the same format, say “.doc”). How do I create one master folder with all these files (and not being distributed into subfolders). I am doing this on a Windows 7 machine, using cygwin terminal.

The cp -r command copies it but leaves the files in the sub-folders, so it doesn’t really help much. I’d appreciate assistance with this. Thank you!

Answer 1

Assuming there could be name collisions and multiple extensions, this will create unique names, changing directory paths to dashes (e.g. a/b/c.doc would become a-b-c.doc). Run this from within the folder you want to collapse:

# if globstar is not enabled, you'll need it.
shopt -s globstar
for file in */**; do [ -f "$file" ] && mv -i "$file" "${file//\//-}"; done
# get rid of the now-empty subdirectories.
find . -type d -empty -delete

If you can guarantee unique names, this will move the files and remove the subdirectories. You can change the two .s to the name of a folder and run it from outside said folder:

find . -depth \( -type f -exec mv -i {} . \; \) -o \( -type d -empty -delete \)