Moving All Files From Directories One Step Up

Question

I have a directories that look like this

fool@brat:/mydir/ucsc_mm8> tar -xvf *.tar 
1/chr1.fa.masked
1/chr1_random.fa.masked
2/chr2.fa.masked
3/chr3.fa.masked
4/chr4.fa.masked
5/chr5.fa.masked
5/chr5_random.fa.masked
19/chr19.fa.masked
Un/chrUn_random.fa.masked

What I want to do is to move out all the "*.masked" files in the subdirectories /1 upto /Un. Is there a compact way to do it in Linux/Unix?

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '09 at 01:32

16

The typical way of moving files all files matching a particular expression is

mv 1/*.masked targetDir

where targetDir could be ..

If you want to move it from directories 1,2,3 then you can do something like

mv */*.masked targetDir

Or, if you want to specifically move it from numbered directories, you can just run something like

mv [0-9][0-9]/*.masked targetDir

answered Mar 10 '09 at 01:32

bsdfish

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The target directory of `..` will move files one step above the current working directory. Not what the OP wants. They want to move it one step above with respect to the actual source files. – Amin Ya Oct 14 '20 at 03:17

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '09 at 01:30

6

mv */*.masked .

answered Mar 10 '09 at 01:30

vladr

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score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 10 '09 at 01:30

Many unix shells support the * operator in the directory portion of the path as well. The following works in at least bash and zsh:

ls */*.masked

This will return all of the files that end in .masked one directory deeper.

So to move them:

mv */*.masked destination

Moving All Files From Directories One Step Up

3 Answers3