Moving files to folders based on a filename

Question

Howdy all of you smart people! I am a bit out of my depth and thought I would ask a question to see if someone with a higher IQ could at least point me in the right direction.

I have a share with a lot of single lvl subfolders all with similar names in format (xxxxxx_x) Inside of each folder there are several files:

• half will start with the same prefix "xxxxxx_x" as the parent folder
• other half has another prefix of 10 digits followed by the parent folder prefix:"yyyyyyyyyy-xxxxxx_x"

I was asked to move files to a new location where I have already scripted a deployment of same folder structure but of course the new ask is for the files to be split based on the above two naming conventions.

TL;DR: So to summarize, how can I move a batch of files from multiple subfolders to other location based on a part of the filename? (prefix)

typical example: c:\share\123456_2\123456_2-filename.xls should go to d:\share\123456_2 while c:\share\123456_2\1234567890-123456_2-filename.xls should go to E:\share\123456_2

I could get the files moved and folders created (if missing) using below but how do I only target files that start with the same string (0,8)?

dir | %{ 
    $id = $_.Name.SubString(0,8); 
    if(-not (Test-Path $id)) {mkdir $id}; 
    mv $_ "D:\share\$_";}

Answer 1

Well, one way to do this is using the -Split operator, or method to get just the first part of the broken string and check to see if it contains the underscore character ( _ ); since that seems to follow the naming scheme.

Get-ChildItem |
    ForEach-Object -Process { 
        $destination = $_.Name.Split('-')[0]
        if ($destination -match "_") {
            Move-Item -LiteralPath $_.FullName -Destination "D:\share\$destination" -WhatIf 
        }
    }

Given that you're not looking to move the other files, this will only move the files that have the same beginning.

---

Remove the -WhatIf safety common parameter once you've dictated the results are what you're after.