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Is there any way on a linux box to move every file in a directory into their own sub directory (i.e. make a directory named after it and move it in)?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Agarax
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1 Answers1

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Try this snippet, assuming all you've got in the currently directory is files (no directories):

for file in *
do
  mv "$file" "$file".tmp &&
  mkdir "$file" &&
  mv "$file".tmp "$file"/"$file"
done

Otherwise (tested only lightly):

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec mv '{}' '{}'.tmp \; -exec mkdir '{}' \; -exec mv '{}'.tmp '{}'/'{}' \;

This worked on my test directory with a couple of arbitrarily named files, some of them with spaces.

Eduardo Ivanec
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    You need double quotes around variable substitutions, otherwise your snippet will go haywire if any file name contains whitespace or wildcards. You can't do that in your second snippet using `find`; you'll need to use `find … -exec`. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 16 '11 at 18:56
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    Very true! It's the kind of thing I forget over and over again, probably because I don't have many filenames with spaces on them. Thanks! – Eduardo Ivanec Jul 17 '11 at 01:42