mjhjmtu

I have a LARGE amount of files in the following structure
all files in /base/, then 4 folders with 2 "random" letters, and then a series of files related to each other.

Example:

/base/ab/12/13/37/file1.txt
/base/ab/12/13/37/file2.txt
/base/ab/12/13/37/file3.txt
/base/cd/b8/e2/a1/other1.txt
.... 
/base/cd/b8/e2/a1/other52.txt
/base/af/f3/45/9e/third1.txt
/base/af/f3/45/9e/third2.txt

etc

I want to keep most of the structure, but add one ADDITIONAL (extra_folder) folder at the end, in which my files belong.
Such that the above is changed to:

/base/ab/12/13/37/extra_folder/file1.txt
/base/ab/12/13/37/extra_folder/file2.txt
/base/ab/12/13/37/extra_folder/file3.txt
/base/cd/b8/e2/a1/extra_folder/other1.txt

I expect that I will need a shell script and the move command.

Thank you very much.

This is what we start with:

$ tree base/
base/
|-- ab
| `-- 12
| `-- 13
| `-- 37
| |-- file1.txt
| |-- file2.txt
| `-- file3.txt
|-- af
| `-- f3
| `-- 45
| `-- 9e
| |-- third1.txt
| `-- third2.txt
`-- cd
 `-- b8
 `-- e2
 `-- a1
 |-- other1.txt
 `-- other52.txt

12 directories, 7 files

First we add the new directories:

$ find base -type d -mindepth 4 -maxdepth 4 -exec mkdir /extra_folder ';'

We use both -mindepth 4 and -maxdepth 4 to create new directories on level four only. Without the -mindepth 4 we would get new directories on higher levels, and without -maxdepth 4 the new directories would themselves be filled with new directories until the pathnames became so long that find no longer was able to create more.

The extra_folder directory is created with mkdir called from -exec.
Now we have

$ tree base/
base/
|-- ab
| `-- 12
| `-- 13
| `-- 37
| |-- extra_folder
| |-- file1.txt
| |-- file2.txt
| `-- file3.txt
|-- af
| `-- f3
| `-- 45
| `-- 9e
| |-- extra_folder
| |-- third1.txt
| `-- third2.txt
`-- cd
 `-- b8
 `-- e2
 `-- a1
 |-- extra_folder
 |-- other1.txt
 `-- other52.txt

15 directories, 7 files

Then we'll move the files down:

$ find base -maxdepth 5 -type f -execdir mv extra_folder ';'

This looks for any regular file in or under the base directory (I'm assuming there are files only on the lowest level) that are on level five. It then uses -execdir to run the mv command inside the directory where the found file is located ( will be the basename of the found file).

We end up with

$ tree base/
base/
|-- ab
| `-- 12
| `-- 13
| `-- 37
| `-- extra_folder
| |-- file1.txt
| |-- file2.txt
| `-- file3.txt
|-- af
| `-- f3
| `-- 45
| `-- 9e
| `-- extra_folder
| |-- third1.txt
| `-- third2.txt
`-- cd
 `-- b8
 `-- e2
 `-- a1
 `-- extra_folder
 |-- other1.txt
 `-- other52.txt

15 directories, 7 files

In one go:

$ find base -type f 
 -execdir sh -c '[ ! -d "$1" ] && mkdir "$1"; mv "$2" "$1"' sh 'extra_folder' ';'

This finds all regular files and moves them into a directory called extra_folder regardless of where they are to start with. Running this command multiple time will move them further and further down.

The mini-script that is called by -execdir:

[ ! -d "$1" ] && mkdir "$1"
mv "$2" "$1"

This will be called with the folder name as $1 and with the filename as $2 and will create the folder if it doesn't exist and then move the file into it.