long ago i wrote an applescript to clean my desktop. once os x came around, i rewrote it in perl. it is easily adaptable for cleaning out other directories, too.

it simply checks for the file type using the unix 'file' command, and if that is not found, it uses the chars after the last dot in the name. then it copies the files into sorted folders in the destination dir. if a file already exists, it is skipped and is reported back to the shell. it could use more work to sort better, but i almost always find the file i want in a couple of clicks.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $input = "/Users/shemp9999/Desktop"; # directory to clean
my $output = "/Users/shemp9999/Deskcrap"; # directory to move files to

my $file;
my $inf;
my @xtmp;
my $xtmp;
my $base;
my $ext;

my $item;

foreach $file (`ls \"$input\"`){
  chomp($file);
  
  # set ignore list for aliases, etc...
  
  $in = "$input\/$file"; #input path with filename
  $inf = `file \"$in\"`;
  chomp($inf);

  @item = split (/\:\s+/, $inf);

  $base = '';
  $ext = '';

  if ($file =~ /\./){ ## if there's a dot in the path/name
    @xtmp = split(/\./, $file);
    $ext = pop (@xtmp);
    foreach $xtmp (@xtmp){
      if ($base ne '') {$base .= '.' } ## restore dot
      $base .= $xtmp;
    }
  }else{  ## if there's no dot extension 
    $base = $file;
  }
 
  if ($ext ne ''){ 
    $dir = $ext;
  }else{
    $dir = $item[1];
  }
 
  $out = "$output\/$dir"; #input path with filename
  $outpath = "$out\/$file";

  unless (stat($outpath)){ ## if the file does not exist
    unless (stat($out)){ ## if the path does not exist
      `mkdir -p \"$out\"`;  ## make the path
    }
    `mv \"$in\" \"$outpath\"`;## move the file
  }else{ ## file exists
    print "file $outpath exists, skipping\n";
  } 
}

[ Reply to This | # ]

Does not work... it moves all the files to destination directory, but does not sort them at all... Resukting error below

######ERROR########
Use of uninitialized value in string ne at sorter.pl line 40.Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at sorter.pl line 46.
######ERROR########

[ Reply to This | # ]