Very Computer

The best solution that I can come up with is:

touch /a/dummy
find /a/* -prune -type f -print -exec mv {} /a/b \;
rm /a/b/dummy

But this is not elegant. Better solutions wanted. Thank you.

--
unix programs: niftp (non-interactive recursive ftp), hide (hide command args),
submit (replace nohup), etc from ftp://ftp.mindspring.com/users/mwang/unix-prog

|> I want to move all files in /a to its subdirectory /a/b.
|> This sounds easy, but to make it work for all conditions:
|> /a does not contain any files, /a contains too many files, ...
|> and error free may not be easy.
|>
|> The best solution that I can come up with is:
|>
|> touch /a/dummy
|> find /a/* -prune -type f -print -exec mv {} /a/b \;
|> rm /a/b/dummy
|>
|> But this is not elegant. Better solutions wanted. Thank you.

If you have GNU find you can use -mindepth/-maxdepth:

find /a -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec mv {} /a/b \;

--
Andreas Schwab                                      "And now for something

--
Randalf J. Mc Murphy

#!/bin/ksh

cd a

\ls -1p | fgrep -v / > /tmp/temp.$$

while read file
do
   mv $file b
done < /tmp/temp.$$

rm /tmp/temp.$$

# End    

--
Randalf J. Mc Murphy

mkdir /newa
mv /a /newa/b
mv /newa /a

(or, mv /a /olda; mkdir /a; mv /olda /a/b)

This won't work if /a is the mount point for a disk, though, or if you
don't have write permission in the / directory.

Note that this will leave you without a /a directory for a very short time;
if programs are frequently creating new files in this directory this may
be a problem.

Two problems with your original:  it won't get files like .cshrc, and it
attempts to rename the directory /a/b into itself (which I think is detected
and prevented by all current systems, but will probably result in an error
message).

Gary Ansok

Quote:> I want to move all files in /a to its subdirectory /a/b.  This sounds
> easy, but to make it work for all conditions: /a does not contain any
> files, /a contains too many files, ...  and error free may not be
> easy.

This will complain about moving `/a/b' into `/a/b/' but otherwise
works.  It does not cover (a) too many files or (b) /a/b being a mount
point.

"Too many files" calls for find/xargs:

  $ find /a/* -prune | grep -v '^/a/b' | xargs mv /a/b/

Mountpoints calls for tar:

  $ find /a/* -prune | grep -v '^/a/b' | xargs tar cf - | tar -C /a/b -xf -

That last is sort of iffy.  I'm not sure what happens if xargs needs to
spawn multiple tar's, whether their output all ends up in the right
pipe.  And I'm too lazy to test it.

Quote:> But this is not elegant. Better solutions wanted. Thank you.

--
Peter Samuelson
<sampo.creighton.edu!psamuels>

Quote:

>#!/bin/ksh

>cd a

>\ls -1p | fgrep -v / > /tmp/temp.$$

>while read file
>do
>   mv $file b
>done < /tmp/temp.$$

>rm /tmp/temp.$$

># End    

cd a && {
\ls -1pa | fgrep -v / | while read file
                        do
                          mv $file b
                        done

Quote:}

Quote:>#!/bin/ksh
>cd a
>mv $(\ls -1p | fgrep -v /) b

There is a problem with dot files, but I can modify it to:
touch /a/dummy /a/.dummy
find /a/* /a/.* -prune -type f -print -exec mv {} /a/b \;
rm /a/b/dummy /a/.dummy

The only problem that I worry is that * will be interpreted by shell,
and so it may exceed the sh argument limit.
--
unix programs: niftp (non-interactive recursive ftp), hide (hide command args),
submit (replace nohup), etc from ftp://ftp.mindspring.com/users/mwang/unix-prog

*snip*

Quote:> touch /a/dummy /a/.dummy
> find /a/* /a/.* -prune -type f -print -exec mv {} /a/b \;
> rm /a/b/dummy /a/.dummy

> The only problem that I worry is that * will be interpreted by shell,
> and so it may exceed the sh argument limit.

-KFL.