macOS sort files by number and move to created folder

[govmac]

I have a bunch of folders that contain upwards of 50,000 files and which are becoming unweildy to deal with. The files in each folder are sequentially named with a time and datestamp. I would like to use automator or applescript to do the following sorting action. Can someone help me with either some code or an example automator workflow?

I would like to have a script that goes to a "parent folder" it then selects the first 1000 files based on sequential naming and then creates a folder in the parent folder named something like folder1 and then moves those first 1000 files into that folder, then the script selects the next 1000 files, creates a folder named folder2 in the parent folder and moves those 1000 files into that folder etc. etc. until all the files have been moved into new sequentially named folders.

any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[superscape]

any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Hi,

Something like this?

set theMaxFilesPerFolder to 5 --change this number to however many files you want in a folder

tell application "Finder"
    set theFolder to choose folder
  
    set theFiles to files of theFolder sort by name
    set theNoOfTotalFiles to count of theFiles
  
    set theFileNo to 1
    repeat with theFile in theFiles
        set theFolderNumber to round (theFileNo / theMaxFilesPerFolder) rounding up
      
        if folder ("folder_" & theFolderNumber) of theFolder exists then
            set theDestFolder to folder ("folder_" & theFolderNumber) of theFolder
        else
            set theDestFolder to make new folder in folder theFolder with properties {name:"folder_" & theFolderNumber}
        end if
      
        move theFile to theDestFolder
        set theFileNo to theFileNo + 1
    end repeat
  
  
  
end tell

NB. I've not tested this thoroughly. Use at your own risk, after making sure you have a backup! usual sensible precautions...

Yes, I am available for children's parties, barmitzvahs, private functions etc.

 

[govmac]

Superscape - first, THANK YOU! this code works pretty much perfect with one exception. I have done a bunch of trial and error testing today. When the "Parent Folder" or in this case "theFolder" contains more than about 1300 files I get a Finder Error- see below- it seems that there is some kind of a timeout limit that I am running into. I get the error regardless of how many files I set "theMaxFilesPerFolder" to. It happens when the code is sorting the files by name. I wonder if there is a "timeout" command that could be entered? If I have less than about 1200 files in the parent folder the code works flawlessly.

The parent folders I want to use this code with to sort files contain upwards of 25,000 files each so the timeout must be set to some value long enough to allow the code to sort all the files by name. Maybe there is some machine speed limitations here as well? I am running OSX Lion on a mac mini for this work. the error is below.

tell application "Finder"
choose folder
sort every file of alias "Macintosh HD:Users:Frankesktop:camsorttestfolder3:" by name
Result:
error "Finder got an error: AppleEvent timed out." number -1712

 

[superscape]

Hi,

Yep, you can set how long AppleScript will let a command take before it assumes something's gone wrong and gives a timeout. There's info on how to do it here:

https://developer.apple.com/library...gGuide/reference/ASLR_control_statements.html

Look up the "with timeout..." statement.