Moving and renaming files on a mac - macos

Question

I have a folder on my desktop called "images".
Inside are a bunch of sub-folders called various things "Flower_Shape", "Smile_Shape", "Dog_Shape", etc. and each folder contains 3 images "Variant1.PNG", "Variant2.PNG", and "Variant3.PNG" and then some other file formats that are called various things but they do not end in .png, they end in things like ".psd"...
How can I take all of the contents of these hundreds of folders, and move them all into 1 folder while changing the names from "Variant1.png" to whatever the name of the folder it was in is called (for example the "Variant1.png" inside the folder "Flower_Shape" would be re-named "Flower_Shape-Variant1.png") and then delete every file that doesn't end in ".png".
My first main question is what language would I use to do something like this? Would it be PERL?
After that is established, does anyone have any tips for how to go about doing this... I'm assuming just a for loop with some if statements should be all it really takes but I know nothing of perl (or any other languages that deal with changing files on my own computer for that matter)
Thanks!

Answer 1

Mac OS X comes with a whole assortment of scripting languages. It comes with Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, and BASH.
Mac OS X also comes with Automator.
What should you choose?
If you're really, really interested in learning to program, I would suggest you start with Bash. BASH is what is called the command shell. If you type a command in at a prompt, it will be executed. The Unix shell is a powerful tool, and the BASH shell includes a lot of control structures that can be used. In BASH, you could use the find command and the mv command and write a loop to do what you want.
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Shell scripts are limited in their power. They aren't suppose to be full service languages and make no apologies for it. If you need more than a few dozen lines or more complex control, you should switch to a scripting language.
I am a Perl programmer, but I would recommend, if you're really interested in learning how to program, to learn Python. Python is probably the most popular language and its use is certainly growing.
Perl is a nice language because much of its syntax structure comes from shell scripting languages. Despite what you've heard, Perl is still very much a popular language. I've found that people pick up Perl faster than Python because of it's looser syntax rules and the fact it doesn't have to be object oriented. That is also a major problem with Perl. Most Perl programmers never get past the basic hacking stage and Perl has a reputation of being a difficult language to maintain because of the sheer number of awful Perl scripts out there.
Ruby hasn't been as popular as Perl or Python, but it has its fans. The big power of Ruby is something called Ruby on Rails. Rails is a programming framework that allows you to quickly build web-based applications. You first should learn Ruby, then learn the Rails component.
PHP use to be the glue that held the web together. I believe its popularity has been dropping in recent years as newer web development platforms have come up. PHP is the mob rule of programming. Unlike all of the other languages, it doesn't have a single champion shaping the language and has developed a lot of detritus. It is sloppy and can be hard to maintain.
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Still, it is the basis of a lot of web based forums and content management systems like Joomla. After all, PHP was designed to live inside of webpages.
If you don't want to learn script programming, you should try Automator. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and can allow you to build programs to do all sorts of tasks. People who have gotten into Automator have done some amazing stuff with it.
Whatever you choose, you can find some tutorials and information on the web, but if you really want to learn, you should get some good manuals. O'Reilly and Associates has a long storied history with computing and the Internet. Tim O'Reilly (the brains behind the company) has been producing computer manuals since 1978. Almost all of my books are O'Reilly books. Manning is another one, and there are dozens more. Go to a real bookstore before Amazon drives them all out of business and peruse their shelves for something you like.

Answer 2

You have to combine File::Find with File::Copy to reach those requirements

Answer 3

If you use perl, you should look into Path::Class and File:::Copy. That'll handle your path parsing. You'd want to iterate over the filesystem (Path::Class::Dir->next will be your friend here), build a destination file with something like:
my $curr_file = file('whatever_path...');
my $dest_dir = dir('some other path...');
my $dest_file = file($dest_dir, $curr_file->dir->basename . '-' . $curr_file->basename);
then use File::Copy to move:
move($curr_file, $dest_file);
Start by looking up those methods/subroutines and their usage; then you just need to code up the iteration.

Answer 4

I was able to accomplish this using this code (and changing the value inside the "glob" function to different levels of /// manually)
#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach my $files (glob ('*/*/*')) {
use strict;
use File::Basename;
use Cwd 'abs_path';
my $f = "$files";
my $d = basename(dirname(abs_path($f)));
my($file, $dir, $ext) = fileparse($files);
my $initialName = "$dir$file";
my $finalName = "$dir$d$file";
print("$initialName --> $finalName \n");
rename($initialName, $finalName);
}
Then it was as simple as moving the files with a move function into a new folder, like so:
#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach my $files (glob ('*/*/*')) {
use strict;
use File::Basename;
use Cwd 'abs_path';
use File::Copy;
my $f = "$files";
my $d = basename(dirname(abs_path($f)));
my($file, $dir, $ext) = fileparse($files);
my $initialLocation = "$dir$file";
my $finalLocation = "AllFiles/$file";
print("$finalLocation\n");
move($initialLocation,$finalLocation);
}