Sort Files in a Directory and Number Them

DAY 10 👾

I’m back 💙

Exam days are ahead of me & I don’t have a hard copy to read from & ebooks for Digital Signal Processing (DSP) suck, atleast those I have. So, today I clicked some pics in my phone & as per the naming convention of my phone they are long strings like IMG_20164144090.jpg & so on… Now I want to sort them all & number them so that final result is 1.jpg. I have 2 languages for automating this task BASH & PYTHON. I’ll go with PYTHON as this usecase is more suitable for it.

Here’s the final Python Script

Firstly, I’ll import all the modules I need, i.e, os module & shutil module

os module

os module to change directories, get files in the directory & to get current working directory

sh module

sh module to copy file from one directory to another directory

Following is the Code with Explanation above each line

# Import `os` & `shutil` module
import os, shutil

# Get Current Working Directory
search_dir = os.getcwd()

# Goto that Directory
os.chdir(search_dir)

# List Files in the Directory, don't list Subdirectories
files = filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir(search_dir))

# For each file, store it in an `files` list
files = [os.path.join(search_dir, f) for f in files]

# Sort all files according to the `date` 
files.sort(key=lambda x: os.path.getmtime(x))

# Directory name to put your sorted files in
dir = "sorted"

# Create that directory
os.system("sudo mkdir -p " + dir)

# Extension of the file, mine are images
extension=".jpg"

# Starting name
i=1

# For every file copy it in sorted directory
for filename in files:
	destination = "sorted/" + str(i) + extension
	shutil.copy(filename,destination)
	i = i + 1
print "Copied all files to 'sorted' directory"
# End of Program

I wish I would’ve done this before as it would’ve helped me in my Previous Semesters. Hope it helps u.

Till the next time 👻