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Discover how to effortlessly organize your camera pictures into specific folders using a simple `Bash script`. Ideal for photographers seeking efficiency.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/75225795/ asked by the user 'JasonWylfa' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/21074819/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/75237496/ provided by the user 'Cyrus' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/3776858/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Automate Your File Organization: A Bash Script to Move Files Based on Prefix

If you're juggling multiple cameras and a mountain of files, staying organized can be a daunting task. As a photographer, Jason faced this challenge while trying to manage photos taken on three different cameras. His goal was to automatically sort these files into folders based on their prefix—specifically, the first three letters of the filename—while further categorizing them by file type (JPG or RAW). Below, we will guide you through the process of creating a Bash script that automates this task.

Understanding the Problem

Jason provided a list of incoming files from his cameras:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Based on these filenames, he wanted to organize them into specific folders, structured like so:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Here, each camera's images need to go into designated folders named according to the camera's prefix and type of image.

Creating the Bash Script

Now, let’s dive into crafting the Bash script that will accomplish this. The script will create the necessary directories and move the files according to their prefixes and types.

Step 1: Creating Directories

The first task of our script is to create the directories where we’ll store our images. The mkdir command is used for this, and with the -p option, we ensure that the script will create parent directories as needed without throwing an error if they already exist. The script to do this looks like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 2: Moving the Files

Next, we have to move each image file into its corresponding folder based on its prefix and file type. Here’s how we can do this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

shopt -s failglob: This command helps to ensure our script doesn’t run into errors if no matching files are found. When out script looks for files starting with "HAM," "HDR," or "STL," and doesn’t find any, the failglob option will trigger an expansion error rather than executing the command with an empty target.

Moving files: Each mv command takes care of the sorting, moving files that match the specific prefix and file type into their respective folders.

Step 3: Full Script

Putting it all together, the complete Bash script looks like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

You've now learned how to write a simple yet effective Bash script that organizes your camera files into proper folders. By using straightforward commands to create directories and move files, you can save yourself hours of manual work.

Feel free to modify the script to fit your specific needs, whether it's adding additional camera prefixes or adjusting folder names. Happy organizing!