How do I extract a file name into 2 parts, making one into directory and the other one inside of it?

Question

I\'m trying to sort all mp3 files by artist and name. At the moment, they\'re in 1 giant file name. E.g Artist - Song name.mp3 I want to convert this to Artist/Song name.mp

Answer 1

Just in case you don't have the rename utility. A fix on your original script.

for f in *.mp3; do
  # extract artist and song name and remove spaces
  artist=${f%% -*}
  song=${f##*- }
  #make directory with the extracted artist name and move + rename the file into the directory
  echo mkdir -p -- "$artist" && echo mv -- "$f" "$artist/$song"
done

• Remove the echo If you're satisfied with the output.