Is there a simple script to duplicate files into a new folder based on a csv file?

Question

Our challenge is that we need to search and duplicate approx 3000 images into a new folder.

The list of image names is a csv file. The files are all on one drive, but in many different folders.

Answer 1

Using Bash:

#!/bin/bash

cat /path/to/file.csv | while IFS=, read col1 col2 col3
do
    find . -path "$col1" -exec cp {} /DESIRED/DIRECTORY \;
done

• IFS is the input field separator. Declare as , for .csv.
• find . -path searches through your home directory recursively for names read from col1, returning the full path.
• exec executes the cp command on {}, which represents all the results find returns
• the files are copied to /DESIRED/DIRECTORY and \; is required for terminating the exec command

Answer 2

Here's a simple python script that will do the trick:

import csv, subprocess

csv_path = '/Users/mdryden/Desktop/test2/test.csv'
search_path = '/Users/mdryden/Desktop/test2/'
output_path = '/Users/mdryden/Desktop/test3/'

with open(csv_path, 'rb') as csvfile:
    dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(1024))
    csvfile.seek(0)
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect)
    for line in reader:
        subprocess.call(["find", search_path, "-name", line[0],
                        "-exec", "cp", "{}", output_path,";"])

Set csv_path, search_path, and output_path accordingly. It it's any sort of remotely standard CSV format, it should be able to autodetect it.The CSV should have no header rows and you need to set line[0] to the number of the column containing the file names (starting at 0 for the first column).

Answer 3

I would use applescript.

Open the csv file in excel grab the files, then pass the variable to the terminal where you would execute a find command followed by a copy command to the directory of your choice.

Here is some pointers:

• Executing commands from applescript;
• How to open an excel file from the command line, and
• Open a file in applescript.

Loop through the csv.