Bash, how to express in if-statement

[JermainWijnhard]

Hi, want to write a script that sorts my downloads for me. The thing i want to make is:

If [some folder contains a file with 'aaa' in it's name]

then mv /folder/*aaa* /otherfolder/aaa/

else echo there is no file with 'aaa' in its name

fi

But i don't know how to express that 1st part. Can anyone help me?

[Stephen Howard]

maybe something like:

if [[ -e $file ]]
then
echo "I could have added a mv command here if I felt like it"
else
echo "no file to move"
fi

Or another way:

ls aaa* | xargs -i mv {} /where/i/want/it/to/go

But a neater way would be something like this:

find ~/ -name 'aaa*' -exec mv '{}' /where/i/want/it/to/go \;

[Stephen Howard]

or even simpler:

mv aaa* /where/I/want/to/move/matching/files

[Stephen Howard]

Also, have a browse of the bash scripting guide (http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html)

[ruy_lopez]

found = 0
for FOLDER in `ls`
do
if [ -d $FOLDER ]
then
for FILE in `ls $FOLDER`
do
if [ -f $FILE ] & expr "$FILE" : '.*aaa.*' >/dev/null
then
mv $FOLDER/$FILE /otherfolder/aaa/
set found = 1
fi
done
if [ "0$found" -gt 0 ]
then
set found = 0 # reset for next directory
else
echo "filename with aaa substring not found in $FOLDER"
fi
fi
done

This kind of thing is better done with perl. It has better substring searching and manipulation.

[ghostdog74]

This kind of thing is better done with perl. It has better substring searching and manipulation.

that's an overstatement. with what OP requires, it can done trivially like eg with the find command.

[JermainWijnhard]

So much help so fast, thank you guys!