Recursively move files in sub-dirs to new sub-dirs of same name

Posted by Gabriel on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Gabriel
Published on 2013-10-08T23:55:28Z Indexed on 2013/11/11 3:59 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

|

command-line

|

bash

I have a batch of files all ending with the same string, ie: *_ext.dat located in several sub-dirs along with several other files, in a given main dir. This is the structure:

/main_dir/subdir1/file11_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir1/file12_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir1/file13_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir1/file14_other.dat
/main_dir/subdir1/file15_other.dat

/main_dir/subdir2/file21_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir2/file22_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir2/file23_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir2/file24_other.dat
/main_dir/subdir2/file25_other.dat

/main_dir/subdir3/file31_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir3/file32_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir3/file33_ext.dat
/main_dir/subdir3/file34_other.dat
/main_dir/subdir3/file35_other.dat

I need to recursively move only the files ending in *_ext.dat into a new main dir, new_dir, respecting the sub-dir structure so the files will end up in an equivalent dir structure like this:

/new_dir/subdir1/file11_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir1/file12_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir1/file13_ext.dat

/new_dir/subdir2/file21_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir2/file22_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir2/file23_ext.dat

/new_dir/subdir3/file31_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir3/file32_ext.dat
/new_dir/subdir3/file33_ext.dat

Because of this the command should also create those sub-dirs with their corresponding names. I know that with a line like this one:

find . -name "*_ext.dat" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

I can delete all those files, but I don't know how to modify it to do what I need (or if it is even possible).

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