PROBLEM:

We have a folder with more than a million files that needs sorting, but we can’t really do anything because mv outputs this message all the time

bash: /bin/mv: Argument list too long

we using this command to move extension-less files:

mv -- !(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) targetdir/

SOLUTION 1:

• xargs is the tool for the job. That, or find with -exec … {} +. These tools run a command several times, with as many arguments as can be passed in one go.
• Both methods are easier to carry out when the variable argument list is at the end, which isn’t the case here: the final argument to mv is the destination.
• With GNU utilities (i.e. on non-embedded Linux or Cygwin), the -t option to mv is useful, to pass the destination first.
• If the file names have no whitespace nor any of \”‘, then you can simply provide the file names as input to xargs (the echo command is a bash built in, so it isn’t subject to the command line length limit):

echo !(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) | xargs mv -t targetdir

• You can use the -0 option to xargs to use null-delimited input instead of the default quoted format.

printf '%s\0' !(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) | xargs -0 mv -t targetdir

• Alternatively, you can generate the list of file names with find. To avoid recursing into subdirectories, use -type d -prune. Since no action is specified for the listed image files, only the other files are moved.

find . -name . -o -type d -prune -o \
       -name '*.jpg' -o -name '*.png' -o -name '*.bmp' -o \
       -exec mv -t targetdir/ {} +

• If you don’t have GNU utilities, you can use an intermediate shell to get the arguments in the right order. This method works on all POSIX systems.

find . -name . -o -type d -prune -o \
       -name '*.jpg' -o -name '*.png' -o -name '*.bmp' -o \
       -exec sh -c 'mv "$@" "$0"' targetdir/ {} +

• In zsh, you can load the mv builtin:

setopt extended_glob
zmodload zsh/files
mv -- ^*.(jpg|png|bmp) targetdir/

or if you prefer to let mv and other names keep referring to the external commands:

setopt extended_glob
zmodload -Fm zsh/files b:zf_\*
zf_mv -- ^*.(jpg|png|bmp) targetdir/

or with ksh-style globs:

setopt ksh_glob
zmodload -Fm zsh/files b:zf_\*
zf_mv -- !(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) targetdir/

Alternatively, using GNU mv and zargs:

autoload -U zargs
setopt extended_glob
zargs -- ./^*.(jpg|png|bmp) -- mv -t targetdir/

SOLUTION 2:

• The operating system’s argument passing limit does not apply to expansions which happen within the shell interpreter.
• So in addition to using xargs or find, we can simply use a shell loop to break up the processing into individual mv commands:

for x in *; do case "$x" in *.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) ;; *) mv -- "$x" target ;; esac ; done

• This uses only POSIX Shell Command Language features and utilities. This one-liner is clearer with indentation, with unnecessary semicolons removed:

for x in *; do
  case "$x" in
    *.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) 
       ;; # nothing
    *) # catch-all case
       mv -- "$x" target
       ;;
  esac
done

SOLUTION 3:

• A solution without a catch block using “$origin”/!(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp):

for file in "$origin"/!(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp); do mv -- "$file" "$destination" ; done

• For a multi-line script you can do the following (notice the ; before the done is dropped):

for file in "$origin"/!(*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp); do        # don't copy types *.jpg|*.png|*.bmp
    mv -- "$file" "$destination" 
done 

• To do a more generalized solution that moves all files, you can do the one-liner:

for file in "$origin"/*; do mv -- "$file" "$destination" ; done

Which looks like this if you do indentation:

for file in "$origin"/*; do
    mv -- "$file" "$destination"
done 

• This takes every file in the origin and moves them one by one to the destination. The quotes around $file are necessary in case there are spaces or other special characters in the filenames.
• Here is an example of this method that worked perfectly

for file in "/Users/william/Pictures/export_folder_111210/"*.jpg; do
    mv -- "$file" "/Users/william/Desktop/southland/landingphotos/";
done