mv command and sub directories

[Mike Loring]

I want to move all files ending in .jpg on the root dirve to a directory called photos. Can I use mv -r /root *.jpg ~photos or something like that which is recursive and looks for .jpg files in all sub directores of the volume?

[Dennis Handly]

find / -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} ~/photos \;

(Unfortunately you can't use +, unless you write a script to do the mv and reverse the args.)

[Ganesan R]

Hi Mike,

In addition to Dennis reply,

If you want to search and move only from root filesystem and do not cross other mount points use this,

#find / -xdev -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} ~/photos \;


Question for Dennis,

#find / -xdev -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} ~/photos +

won't this work? unfortunately not near to the system to test it..

[Dennis Handly]

>Ganesan: find / -xdev -name "*.jpg" -exec mv {} ~/photos +
>won't this work?

I tried those before replying. Neither find + nor xargs works with multiple arguments inserted other than the end.
In fact find(1) says everything from the "{}" to the "+" is replaced.

So you are left with writing a script, if you want performance:
find / -xdev -name "*.jpg" -exec move_them ~/photos {} +
move_them:
#!/usr/bin/ksh
TARGET=$1
shift
mv "$@" "$TARGET"