Create directories by reading file as a input in bash

Question

i have a input file say temp.txt with content as following

  2013-08-13 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-03-01
  2013-08-14 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-03-02
  2013-08-15 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-03-03
  2013-07-30 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-07-30
  2013-07-31 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-07-31
  2013-08-16 /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-08-13

I need to iterate over this file and create directories with the date specified at the begining of the line and then move the data in the directory specified after the date to this particular directory..

for example: for first line i need to do a

mkdir "2013-08-13"

and then

mv /data/PSG/LZ/INVENTORY_FORECAST/load_date=2013-03-01/  2013-08-13

i am trying to do it with

  cat temp.txt | while read line ; do  mkdir "echo $line | awk '{print $0}'"; done;

tried to use line as a array using

  cat temp.txt | while read line; do lineArray=($line) echo $line, ${lineArray[0]}, $lineArray[1];  done;

but none of these seem to work.. any idea about how to approach this problem ?

echo "echo $line | awk '{print $0}'";

Karoly Horvath
– Karoly Horvath

2013-08-15 20:04:40 +00:00
Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 20:04 — Karoly Horvath
– Karoly Horvath, Commented Aug 15, 2013 at 20:04

user000001 · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 20:35:14Z

6

You can read the lines into two variables. For example:

while read -r date path # reads the lines of temp.txt one by one, 
                        # and sets the first word to the variable "date", 
                        # and the remaining words to the variable "path"
do 
    mkdir -p -- "$date"  # creates a directory named "$date".
    mv -- "$path" "$date" # moves the file from the "$path" variable to the "$date folder"
done < temp.txt   # here we set the input of the while loop to the temp.txt file

The -- option is used so that if a file starts with - it will not be interpreted as an option, but will be treated literally.

The -p or --parents makes the mkdir command to not trow an error if the directory exists, and to make parent directories if necessary.

edited Aug 15, 2013 at 20:35

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 17:11

user000001

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8 Comments

Adrian Frühwirth Over a year ago

You might want to use mkdir -p in case there are multiple identical dates.

Daddy Over a year ago

Can you explain what each line of this script is doing? I have a similar issue, in that I want to use a "control" file as input to a bash script, and need to extract specific lines and turn them into variables

user000001 Over a year ago

@JustinAmberson Added some explanations. Let me know if something is still unclear

Daddy Over a year ago

nice, thank you for doing that. This pretty much means that a given input file has to have a uniform format for each line. Don't mean to bug you, but what if I want to process one "field" as a "string", is there a way to capture that with quotes or something?

user000001 Over a year ago

@JustinAmberson Not sure I understand... If you want to read the whole line in to a variable you can do while read -r var with a singe variable after the read command.

|

iamauser · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 17:12:07Z

0

This should do the job:

while read line
do
export dname=`echo $line | awk '{print $1}'`
mkdir -p "$dname"
export fname=`echo $line | awk '{print $2}'`
mv "$fname" "$dname"
done < temp.txt

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 17:12

iamauser

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