Bash move file to folder of same name

Question

I apologize in advance if I am posting this in the wrong location, I am very new to scripting let alone stackoverflow:

I have a number of files ending in .conf in the same directory as a number of folders with the same names without the .conf extension. For example, my directory looks like this:

136
136.conf
139
139.conf
...

I would like to move the .conf files into their corresponding folder with a loop. I thought I could do this:

for f in *.conf; do
    dir=${f:0:13}
    mv "$f" "$dir"
done

but I am obviously doing something incorrectly. I would greatly appreciate anyone's help with this.

What are you trying to achieve by cutting string at position 13 ? — Gilles Quénot, Mar 04 '18 at 18:52

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '18 at 18:54

5

Use Bash parameter expansion to derive the directory name by removing the extension (anything that follows the .):

for f in *.conf; do
  [[ -f "$f" ]] || continue # skip if not regular file
  dir="${f%.*}"
  mv "$f" "$dir"
done

This is a little better than the substring approach since we make no assumption on the length of the filename or directory name.

answered Mar 04 '18 at 18:54

codeforester

39,467
16
112
140

1

Works perfectly. Thank you! – foolsparadise Mar 04 '18 at 19:14
1

This doesn't work properly when the filename contains a 2nd period (.). – snips-n-snails Sep 02 '18 at 23:52

Bash move file to folder of same name

1 Answers1

Linked