A drive of folders within folders. . .into one folder?

Hey guys,

Is it possible to have the Macintosh take the contents of every folder. . . .and copy it into one folder?

Ie if I have:

Folder 1: Horror: (Some files)
Folder 2: Comedy: (Some files)
Folder 3: Folder: Cartoon: (Some files)

. . .

Is it possible to have the Mac to the end of each folder. . . get the files. . .remove them from the folder and put them all into one big unorganised folder?

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Soundburst said:

Hey guys,

Is it possible to have the Macintosh take the contents of every folder. . . .and copy it into one folder?

Ie if I have:

Folder 1: Horror: (Some files)
Folder 2: Comedy: (Some files)
Folder 3: Folder: Cartoon: (Some files)

. . .

Is it possible to have the Mac to the end of each folder. . . get the files. . .remove them from the folder and put them all into one big unorganised folder?

Click to expand...

I searched the Drive in question for any file containing a '.' and got all of the items inside folders. . .there are 49,000 so i'm getting a spinning beachball trying to drag them into their new folder lol

b0fh666 said:

cp `find <sourcedir> -type f` <destinationdir>/

cheers

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what what means?

I dragged the folder contain all the folders into your sourcedir in Terminal. Is this correct? It won't let me drag it for some reason.

b0fh666 said:

!!

no need to drag anything, just type that in terminal replacing <sourcedir> and <destinationdir> with the paths to your folders!

cheers

Click to expand...

Thanks for your help but I get:

-bash: /: Is a directory

When I type the above ?

b0fh666 said:

post the command you are typing here

Click to expand...

Aarons-MacBook-Pro:~ Aaron$ cp `find </Volumes/SOUND\ EFFECTS/SOUND\ EFFECTS/ALL\ SFX > -type f` </Volumes/SOUND\ EFFECTS/SFX >/


SOUND EFFECTS / ALL SFX contains a massive library of folders.

I want the files of all those to be copied into the 'SFX' folder in the Root of the drive.

I've probably missed a space or something lol. I appreciate your help!

b0fh666 said:

drop the placeholders (< and >), sorry about that, old habits

command :

cp `find /Volumes/SOUND\ EFFECTS/SOUND\ EFFECTS/ALL\ SFX -type f` /Volumes/SOUND\ EFFECTS/SFX/

Click to expand...

"Argument List Too Long".

To be fair there are 48,000 items so i'll just have to do it bit by bit haha.

Appreciate you sticking through as far as you did though

Cheers.

b0fh666 said:

crap

yea, will need to break it into smaller chunks, 48.000 is too much for this quick and dirty approach.

otherwise a bash script is needed.

edit: by the way, not sure about HFS+, but having 48k files int the same folder in NTFS (windows) is a sure recipe for headaches.

Click to expand...

I know

But I have no option. . .AVID can't search for a file. . .say. . 'Wind' in a massive folder structure. It can only search one folder. So I'm stuck with it