bash script doesnt like folders with spaces

[RabbieBurns]

roberts Photos # find . -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} /tmp  \;
roberts Photos # ls /tmp
1.jpg  2.jpg  holiday.jpg

Yep. Thanks.

So, does this mean that I cant use /Photos/new as the destination to move photos from /Photos/new/blah blah ?

[powdarrmonkey]

Im not quite sure what this error means?

roberts Photos # find . -name *.jpg -type f -print0 | xargs -0 mv '{}' /Photos/new
mv: target `./new/Summer 2009/summer2.jpg' is not a directory

Sorry, my mistake. It should read:

find . -name *.jpg -type f -print0 | xargs -0 --replace mv '{}' /Photos/new

As an aside, using find with -exec results in one forked process per file processed, wheras using xargs puts as many files as possible into one call to mv, so one forked process per many, many files. If you're moving lots of things around, you'll probably notice the difference.


Edit: another thought, you can also use -i instead of --replace in your call to xargs.

[CyberNerd]

As an aside, using find with -exec results in one forked process per file processed, wheras using xargs puts as many files as possible into one call to mv, so one forked process per many, many files. If you're moving lots of things around, you'll probably notice the difference.

Thats useful to know, I never quite got the hang of xargs but will endeavor to learn!

[RabbieBurns]

roberts Photos # find . -name *.jpg -type f -print0 | xargs -0 --replace mv '{}' /Photos/new
find: paths must precede expression: 2.jpg
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

roberts Photos # find . -name *.jpg -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -i mv '{}' /Photos/new
find: paths must precede expression: 2.jpg
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

I appreciate your help. (PS. The file 2.jpg is in /Photos/, which is where Im running the command)

[powdarrmonkey]

Damn, it's really not going well for me today Wrap your *.jpg in quotes to stop bash interpreting it, like "*.jpg". Otherwise, bash tries to give find a list of files that it think it should be finding, and find gets grumpy.

@Cybernerd: All it does it turn

mv 1.jpg /tmp
mv 2.jpg /tmp
mv 3.jpg /tmp
mv 4.jpg /tmp
mv 5.jpg /tmp
mv 6.jpg /tmp
mv 7.jpg /tmp

into

mv 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg 4.jpg 5.jpg 6.jpg 7.jpg /tmp

but also does some sanity checking, like making sure that the list of arguments isn't so long as to cause a buffer overflow (in which case, splits it into two calls).

[RabbieBurns]

Thats it!

Works well. Many thanks