Move unique files from a folder with duplicates files

Question

Well to put it simply, I have duplicate files in a folder, with this form:

file.ext
file(1).ext
file(2).ext
file(3).ext
otherfile.ext
otherfile(1).ext
otherfile(2).ext
...

I want to move only file.ext and otherfile.ext to another folder. Is it possible to do it in bash?

I thought that maybe awk would be helpful?

Answer 1

In bash:

shopt -s extglob # activates extended pattern matching features
mv !(*\(+([0-9])\)).ext /path/to/target/

The regular expression matches all files, that don't end with (n).ext, where n is one or more numbers: +([0-9]).

You can check it with echo:

echo !(*\(+([0-9])\)).ext 

Prints:

file.ext otherfile.ext

Answer 2

It depends. If we can assume that any file whose name contains ( should be ignored, you could just do:

shopt -s extglob ## turns on fancy glob patterns
mv !(*\(*) /path/to/target

If you can have other names that contain ( or if you need to only move those files which are duplicated, you can do:

for f in *\(*; do 
    ## Does this file have an original?
    [[ -e "${f%%(*}.${f##*.}" ]] && 
        ## Move the original
        mv "${f%%(*}.${f##*.}" /path/to/target; 
done

Answer 3

Try something like that:

$ ls  *ext | grep -P '[^)]\.ext' | xargs -iXXxxFILEXXxx mv XXxxFILEXXxx target/

grep will filter out files with brackets in names and xargs will run command mv on results. The ugly XXxxFILEXXxx label is for placing file names as mv argument.