Find and move files to appropriate directories using shell script

Question

I have below setup and I want to find and move files.

I have files /home/backup/abc/123.wav and /home/backup/xyz/456.wav . Same directories exist at /usr/src/abc and /usr/src/xyz which does not have any files.

I want to find .wav files from home_dir and move them to particular dest_dir.

So 123.wav should move to /usr/src/abc and 456.wav should move to /usr/src/xyz. I am using below command for that.

home_dir=/home/backup/
dest_dir=/usr/src/
cd $home_dir && find . -iname "*.wav" -exec mv {} $dest_dir \;

But all the .wav files(123.wav and 456.wav) moved to /usr/src and not to its respective directories(/usr/src/abc and /usr/src/xyz).

Is it possible to achieve what I want ? Please suggest.

Answer 1

Use cp --parents option with find to create parent directories of each file being copied:

home_dir=/home/backup/
dest_dir=/usr/src/
cd "$home_dir"

find . -iname "*.wav" -exec cp --parents {} "$dest_dir" \; -delete

Answer 2

This would be a lot easier if mv had a --parents option, but unfortunately it doesn't. It's best to use mv instead of cp because cp will copy all the data unnecessarily if the source and destination directories are on the same filesystem. if you've got Bash 4 (which supports globstar ) you could do it like this:

home_dir=/home/backup/
dest_dir=/usr/src/

shopt -s globstar nullglob dotglob

for src_wav in "$home_dir"/**/*.wav ; do
    rel_wav=${src_wav#$home_dir/}
    dst_wav=$dest_dir/$rel_wav
    dst_parent=${dst_wav%/*}
    [[ -d $dst_parent ]] || mkdir -p -- "$dst_parent"
    mv -- "$src_wav" "$dst_wav"
done