mjhjmtu

I have this huge folder with thousands of unordered files. Is it feasible to move the first 5000s to a subfolder via the mv command? For now I move files with

 mv *some_pattern* ./subfolder1/

As for now, I move images quite randomly, it's not really important if there aren't exactly 5000 files in each subfolder. Is there a better way to do it?

mv `ls | head -500` ./subfolder1/

With zsh:

mv -- *(D.oN[1,5000]) ./subfolder1

To move up to 5000 regular files in the order they are in the directory.

For the first 5000 in the lexicographically sorted list:

mv -- *(D.[1,5000]) ./subfolder1

If you get an error about arg list too long. You can use zsh's buitin mv command by issuing:

zmodload zsh/files

first.

POSIXly:

set --
for f in .* *; do
 [ "$#" -lt 5000 ] || break
 [ -f "$f" ] || continue
 [ -L "$f" ] && continue
 set -- "$@" "$f"
done
mv -- "$@" subfolder1/

You might need to do something like this:

x=1
for file in *
do
 if [ "X$x" = "X#####" ]; then
 break
 fi
 mv $file <destination>
 x=`expr $x + 1`
done

This script works in bash, ksh, sh and multiple UNIX variants.

A version that is simple and supports special chars, spaces, etc.

ls -Q dir1 | head -1000 | xargs -i mv dir1/ dir2/

For this to work as-is dir2 must exist and you have to execute it from the parent directory of dir1 and dir2.

This will move 1000 files from dir1 to dir2.

1. Goto the directory which you want to move files from


2. 
   

   run below command

   
   
   

   find . -name 'Hello*.gz' | head -n 5000 | xargs -I mv /data01/path/ 
   

   
   

In the find command, . (dot) denotes current directory

finds files which start with Hello and end with gz , first 5000 files will be moved to the path /data01/path/