Rename and copy/move sets of similar named directories to another location

Question

For a set of directories with similar names at different location,

/foldX/dirA with sub-directories aa1 aa2 aa3 aa4 aa5

/foldZ/dirA with sub-directories aa1 aa2 aa3

/foldY/dirA with sub-directories aa1 aa2 aa3

What could be an efficient way to copy or move the directories aa* to another folder, /foldNew/dirA, as aa1, aa2, aa3, aa4, aa5, aa6, aa7, aa8, aa9, aa10 ?

aa1 to aa4 from foldX

aa5 to aa7 from foldY

aa8 to aa10 from foldZ

Answer 1

The following script does what you want:

#!/bin/bash
counter=0
mkdir foldNew
for i in fold?/dirA/aa*; do
    counter=$((counter + 1))
    mv $i foldNew/aa$counter
done

It keeps count of how many folders it moved already, and it uses Bash's wildcard system to iterate over all the folders you want to move.

I tested it with the setup you described, and it did what you wanted, with the only exception that it moved them to aa1 through aa11, because dirA has five subdirectories, not four.

That script moves aa20 earlier than aa3. If the order of the subdirectories really matters, you can try this code:

#!/bin/bash
counter=0
mkdir foldNew
for i in $(echo fold?/dirA/aa* | sort -V); do
    counter=$((counter + 1))
    mv $i foldNew/aa$counter
done

I think that it doesn't handle spaces and newlines in filenames well, however, so be careful if you use it.