I have a directory filled with thousands of files in the format LastnameFirstnameYYYYMMDD.pdf. The last and first name will always been in title case.

I'd like to extract the last name so I can move these files to a directory structure of {first letter of last name}/lastname/full filename. Example: DoeJohn20190327 would be moved to D/Doe/DoeJohn20190327

2

2 Answers

Here you have a solution. I tested it an it creates the folders as you explained.

for filename in *.pdf
do echo "Processing file $filename " first_letter="${filename:0:1}" mkdir -p $first_letter #if already exists won't print error last_name=$(echo $filename | sed 's/\([^[:blank:]]\)\([[:upper:]]\)/\1 \2/g' |awk '{print $1}') mkdir -p $first_letter/$last_name mv $filename $first_letter/$last_name
done

If the lastname is always the shortest trailing string staring with an upper case letter (there are no compound lastnames for example) you could use a shell parameter expansion of the form ${parameter%pattern} in place of a regex solution.

Ex.

for f in [[:upper:]]*[[:upper:]]*; do d="${f:0:1}/${f%[[:upper:]]*}/" echo mkdir -p "$d" echo mv "$f" "$d"
done
mkdir -p D/Doe/
mv DoeJohn20190327 D/Doe/

Remove the echos when you are satisfied that it is doing the right thing.

See for example Parameter Expansion

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