I have mp3 music file all over my file system. I'd like to move them onto specific directory called /mnt/mp3. So how do you find and move all mp3 files to /mnt/mp3 directory?
Simply use find command. It locates all files and then executes a command to move them to /mnt/mp3 (any other directory).
Step # 1: Finding all your .mp3 files
Following will just find all your .mp3 files using find command:
# find / -iname "*.mp3" -print
Where,
=> / - Search / root directory
=> -iname - File name search pattern (case insensitive)
=> -print - Display name of files
Step # 2: Finding and moving all your .mp3 files in one pass
Type the following command to find and move all files to /mnt/mp3 directory:
# find / -iname "*.mp3" -exec mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;
Where,
- -exec mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;: Execute mv command. The string '{}' is replaced by the file name. \; ends /bin/mv command.
Tip: You just need to move .mp3 files and not directory, use:
# find / -iname "*.mp3" -type f -exec /bin/mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;
Find all directories having name mp3 and move:
# find / -iname "*.mp3" -type d -exec /bin/mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;
For performance you may need to consider using xargs command:
find / -iname "*.mp3" -type f | xargs -I '{}' mv {} /mnt/mp3
You can also write a script that moves files along with directories. This is also useful to move all files to mp3 player that has been mounted on /mnt/mp3 directory.
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
find -exec {} forks a process for *every* found file and is not the best way of doing things. xargs is better in that it checks the maximum command length and intelligently breaks up commands. This makes it:
a.) Faster
b.) More efficient
c.) Yet another way to do the same thing
Here is the magic:
find / -iname -type f “*.mp3″ | xargs -I ‘{}’ mv {} /mnt/mp3
Jeff
Thanks for pointing out xargs. I’ve updated the post.
Some of you arguments are out of order.
The correct statements are
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type d -exec /bin/mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f -exec /bin/mv {} /mnt/mp3 \;
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f | xargs -I ‘{}’ mv {} /mnt/mp3
Scott,
…article has been updated
Appreciate your post.
Jai Swaminarayan
You have done a great job
Keep it up
Just Excellent
and how can i actually move the files along with their directory? incl Xargs argument..? that would be just perfect!
thnx a lot in advance?
thank you guys so much for this article and the additional posts. i just had to do a file recovery from a hard drive that i accidentally erased when migrating from windows to linux and it restored all my music into approximately 12,000 different directories and i was going through each folder pulling them out cuz there isn’t a app that allowed me to find and move. this was EXACTLY what i needed. Thanx again for the helpful post.
Really usefull!
thx from spain!
xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option
xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I ‘{}’ mv {} /mnt/mp3
This should get rid of “xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option”
hey thanks, from CHILE,
i’ve lost all my information because y made a mistake on installing linux and unfortunate i formatted the disk, and all my data lost, then y install testdisk and y recover 90 percent of all my data, but it comes with serial name, like f123113.txt, f124434.pdf also in directories of 500 files, i had 75 directories, (75*500=a lot of work searching for pdf).
so i reorganized my files by type in different folders
thxs a lot
sorry for poor English…
Hey, thanks a lot for this! I’ve been studying bash scripting so I could do exactly this! Thanks a lot! btw.. It wasn’t clear to me, does this copy *just* the files, or does it also copy the directories? Thanks a lot again!
Isaiah
@Isaiah
It copies files from all the subdirectories into one target directory.
Ah, that’s what I figured. Well, thank you very much! It’s really nice, I’m going to try to find a way to write a script that searches out all mp3s within a directory and it’s subdirectories(say, my “Music” directory), and then copy only the mp3s out, but keep the structure… I’m sure this is not only possible, but fairly easy… sad to say, I’m just learning shell scripting, so I have very little idea how to do it. I’m currently just figuring out the steps I’d need to take to get this working, then I’m going to use my trusty friend “google” to help me translate that into shell scripting. Many thanks! If anyone has any ideas on how to get this working, I’d be eternally grateful! :)
Isaiah(dreadpirate15)
@Isaiah
I’m sure there is a simpler way, but I can think of doing it in two passes
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I ‘{}’ mkdir -p /mnt/mp3/`basename {}`
find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I ‘{}’ mv {} /mnt/mp3/{}
This is very helpful! Thanks for all your help! Quick question: Is there a way to delete the directory where the MP3 came from?
If you just want to clean up empty directories after you’re done, this is a quick command I keep in a script called pruneEmptyDirs:
perl -MFile::Find -e”finddepth(sub{rmdir},’.')”
I am new to linux, taking classes, reading, etc…
Can someone explain to me what the “iname” in this command is? I’m not familiar with that
”’find / -iname “*.mp3″ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I ‘{}’ mv {} /mnt/mp3/{}”’
I want to run mplayer in Fedora, scan my drive for mp3 and relocate to an mp3 directory
The “man” command will be your friend. So “man find” will explain the command and its options.
In this case -iname means do a case-insentive match on the filename, and the “-type f” means only match files not directories or symbolic links.
“You can also write a script that moves files along with directories. This is also useful to move all files to mp3 player that has been mounted on /mnt/mp3 directory.”
Can someone help me with this?
Hi
After some hours i get functional script….
i don’t know why but this above command don’t work on my debian so i had to spent some time for it…
Here is working code (in this case i find .jpg but it doesn’t matter)
find /mnt/hda1/zdjecia/test1/ -type f -iname ‘*.jpg’ -printf ‘%’h'\’”0″ | xargs -0 -I ‘{}’ mkdir -p /mnt/hda1/test/{} \;
find /mnt/hda1/zdjecia/test1/ -iname “*.jpg” -type f -exec cp {} -rv /mnt/hda1/test{} ‘;’
the first makes folders and the second copying files…
I don’t know why to copy command xargs don’t works… so i used exec
sory for my bad english…
how to find mp3, jpg using linux command with file size
how to find mp3 and jpg using linux command with file size.
You could copy files and folder structure but only copy the actual files of *.mp3 type with rsync too, and this would work locally or via SSH:
locally:
rsync -av –progress –include “*/” –include “*.mp3″ –exclude “*” /some/path/ /mnt/targetpath/
remotely:
rsync -av –progress –include “*/” –include “*.mp3″ –exclude “*” rsync -av –progress –include “*/” –include “*.mp3″ –exclude “*” /some/path/ /mnt/targetpath/ username@remotehost.com:/target/path/
Sorry copy and paste fail:
Remotely:
rsync -av –progress –include “*/” –include “*.mp3″ –exclude “*” /some/path/ username@remotehost.com:/target/path/