Solved Help Needed with Searching File/Folder/Move .Bat file

[Gunslinger2]

I've been searching the last 2 hours on a solution to my problem & have yet to find an answer so I thought I would post it here.

Description of Problem:

I have a folder dedicated for songs (guitar tabs & chords) that are .htm extensions, however I would like to move these songs to the/an appropriate Artist folder.

For Example: (current DIR layout)
Folder \ songtitlewithnospaces.htm

Ideal DIR layout
Artist Folder \ songtitlewithnospaces.htm

I have a listing or can create a listing (.txt file) of the songs by the artist, I need a way to search this .txt file for the song name (with no spaces i.e. songwithnospaces.htm) and move the file to the corresponding artist folder.

I would like to create a .bat file for this as I have 1000+ songs and to search/find & move each song file to the correct artist folder would take more time than I have.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[EzioAuditore]

Can't say about the batch file but have you looked at MediaMonkey » Free Media Jukebox, Music Manager, CD Ripper & Converter ?
An excellent app to manage messed up media collection.

 

[Gunslinger2]

It's not my media collection that is messed up, well it is somewhat but I've used media monkey in the past and it's ended up making things worse.

No this is a collection of song chords & tabs (to teach you how to play the song on guitar) and all the files are in .htm or .html format.

 

[Duzzy]

Could you upload a text file in the format of,

Artist Name 1
songwithnospaces1.htm
songwithnospaces2.htm

Artist Name 2
songwithnospaces3.htm
songwithnospaces4.htm

etc....

Then I could easily create a batch file like,

xcopy /qv songwithnospaces1.htm .\"Artist Name 1"
xcopy /qv songwithnospaces2.htm .\"Artist Name 1"
xcopy /qv songwithnospaces3.htm .\"Artist Name 2"
xcopy /qv songwithnospaces4.htm .\"Artist Name 2"

If that looks right to you.

 

[Gunslinger2]

Currently still searching for an answer but yes attached are two artist documents with their songs.

The format of the .txt files isn't exactly like you want as I think I'm on to something along the lines of what I need.

Using 2 files (Alabama.txt) with Filelist.txt (Dir /b > filelist.txt, from .bat file)

Current .bat file:

@ECHO OFF
:: Get Files In The Directory & Output Them Into Filelist.txt
Dir /b > filelist.txt 
::
Dir /b|find "string" (C:\Artist\Alabama.txt)
for %%a in (E:\0BACKUP ONLY\DOCS\song lyrics) do move (C:\Artist\)
pause

there are no spaces in the file name of the html files is why the songs are they way they are.

 

[Duzzy]

No attachments, did you click upload after browsing and selecting the files?
Edit: Files there now

Does each Artist have their own text file with a list of their files?

 

[Gunslinger2]

no I'm having to manually create that list & ill be creating the list all the same way

 

[Duzzy]

filelist.txt is no good there's no way to determine which file belongs to which artist, except some that have the artist in the title.
The other two I can work with or creating a list in one file in the format I specified before.

 

[Gunslinger2]

that's why I was using 2 files i.e. Alabama.txt to get the songs by them and searching the Filelist.txt for the songs and then moving the .html files to the corresponding artist directory. Just trying to automate the process as much as I can as I have to make each artist song list manually.

I figure that I'll have to end up making a .bat file for each artist which is fine but I'm unfamiliar with all of the .bat file functions.

 

[Duzzy]

Make a backup of the files if you havn't already. Now this isn't perfect but if you can create a list for each artist then this should work

@echo off

rem Copy Files
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%i in ("D:\Artist\Alabama.txt") do xcopy /qv "%%ilyricschords.*" ".\Alabama\*.*"
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%i in ("D:\Artist\BillAnderson.txt") do xcopy /qv "%%ilyricschords.*" ".\BillAnderson\*.*"

rem Move Files - requires destination folder to already exist
md Alabama
md BillAnderson
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%i in ("D:\Artist\Alabama.txt") do move "%~dp0%%ilyricschords.html" "%~dp0Alabama\"
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%i in ("D:\Artist\BillAnderson.txt") do move "%~dp0%%ilyricschords.html" "%~dp0BillAnderson\"

echo.
pause

Just put it in the same folder as the files.

Only use the 2 copy lines or 2 move lines not all 4. I would use the copy lines as there will be less scripting then if all is successful then you can delete the originals.

Take note the two text files did not contain the extension .html on the file names if any list does then remove .* from "%%ilyricschords.*" for the copy lines or remove .html "%~dp0%%ilyricschords.html" for the move lines.

I can't see anyway of doing this any easier than manually creating the list files. Using a single list file in the format I specified before would take just as long to create but using find and replace in a good text editor could speed up the batch file creation.

EDIT: Just looked at your filelist.txt again and noticed all files contain "lyricschords" on the end so I updated the code to work with that.

EDIT: New and improved code in next post.

 

[Duzzy]

New and improved code.
If your text files are named as the artist and the way you want the subfolder to read then use this

@echo off

for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%i in ('dir /b C:\Artist\*.txt') do (call :COPY_FILES "C:\Artist\%%i.%%j" ".\%%i\*.*")

exit

:COPY_FILES
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%G in (%1) do xcopy /qv "%%Glyricschords.*" %2

No need to create a line for each artist it uses the text files name as the artist name.
I've only given code to copy the files to subfolders because it's easier than the move command.

BTW the text files should be located in C:\Artist and again run this from the folder containing the files to copy. This is based on your list formatted as

fortyhourweek
hatsoff
hangingupmytravelingshoes

if they are like

fortyhourweeklyricschords.html
hatsofflyricschords.html
hangingupmytravelingshoeslyricschords.html

then replace "%%Glyricschords.*" with "%%G"
with this code all list will need to be in the same format.

 

[Gunslinger2]

using this:

@echo off

for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%i in ('dir /b C:\Artist\*.txt') do (call :COPY_FILES "C:\Artist\%%i.%%j" ".\%%i\*.*")

exit

:COPY_FILES
for /F "usebackq delims==" %%G in (%1) do xcopy /qv "%%Glyricschords.*" %2

as it is much faster but is there a way to delete the original file so that only the copy located within the artist folder exist?

 

[Duzzy]

I could see why that would be handy. Just change the last line to this

for /F "usebackq delims==" %%G in (%1) do xcopy /qv "%%Glyricschords.*" %2 && del /q /f "%%Glyricschords.*"

bit of info on &&

Use to run the command following && only if the command preceding the symbol is successful. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then runs the second command only if the first command completed successfully.

 

[Gunslinger2]

ok, the above code is working flawlessly for the most part for which I am grateful, however I've hit a snag.

Originally I had 3 txt documents titled: GospelCountry, LatestAdditions & Bluegrass
I've copied all the songs into one document called 0Songs2Organize.txt.

This file has 1535 songs.....

As it stands I have 103 Artist .txt files (i.e. Alabama etc. etc.)

I need a simpler/faster way to go through 0Songs2Organize.txt, get the artist name & song because as of this moment I'm having to sit and read/search for the artist, song, copy & paste to the corresponding Artist.txt file then remove the "By "Artist"", turn everything to lowercase and remove all the spacing....manually (d). Using Notepad++ makes some of this easier but heh...not enough..

I've also tried grouping the songs by artist in the 0Songs2Organize.txt and then copying & pasting to the appropriate Artist.txt but again it's time consuming to cut 'n paste scrolling up and down 1500+ lines grouping by artist :banghead:

Is there any way to ...for the lack of a better term "parse" the 0Songs2Organize.txt file so that it groups by the artist then I could just copy & paste to the correct Artist.txt file?

Any solution would probably be a better one than the way I'm currently having to do this so any feedback or help is appreciated.

-Note-
Uploaded 0Songs2Organize.txt & artist.zip (contains all current artist.txt files created) for examples.

 

[Duzzy]

Sorry for the late reply but it took a little to get something I think will work, well it's the best I can come up with anyway. It's still a hassle and also a 2 stage approach.

Create a folder and put the 0Songs2Organize.txt and the FindReplace.vbs script in it. A sample batch file and the VBScript are attached.

VBScript came from - VBScript Search and Replace

Create a batch file with the following code or start with my sample.

set STRING=
findstr /i /c:"%STRING%" ".\0Songs2Organize.txt"> ".\Artist\### %STRING%.txt"
findstr /i /v /c:"%STRING%" ".\0Songs2Organize.txt"> 0Songs2Organize1.txt
del ".\0Songs2Organize.txt"
ren ".\0Songs2Organize1.txt" "0Songs2Organize.txt"
cscript FindReplace.vbs ".\Artist\### %STRING%.txt" "%STRING%" ""
cscript FindReplace.vbs ".\Artist\### %STRING%.txt" " " ""

Now to use this you need to open 0Songs2Organize.txt and copy "by Artist Name" or "Artist Name" for the ones that don't have "by" in front and paste to the batch file so it looks like, set STRING=by Artist Name

If the "by Artist Name" has the "&" char in it, like "by carl & pearl butler" then it will need to be put in as, STRING=by carl ^& pearl butler.

You can do several at a time. Each time the batch runs it will remove the line from 0Songs2Organize.txt to make it easier to do the ones you havn't already done.

Don't worry about the Artist.txt filename yet we'll get to that just see how you go with this for now.

To be continued...

I'm having to sit and read/search for the artist, song, copy & paste to the corresponding Artist.txt file then remove the "By "Artist"", turn everything to lowercase and remove all the spacing....manually

Here I'm not sure about "turn everything to lowercase".
Are you talking about the text inside the Artist.txt file or do you mean Uppercase each name in the Artist.txt filename?

For the former I think were fine because DOS ignores cases with most things or use a switch to ignore also I couldn't see any uppercase in 0Songs2Organize.txt anyway and for the latter we'll get to that when we continue.

 

[Gunslinger2]

Update, spent majority of last night/this morning separating, organizing artist with songs via spreadsheet.

Currently have a folder C:\Artist\*.txt - * = Artist that contains all the artist.txt files (used .bat file)

@echo off
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%i in (C:\songtools\Artist.txt) do (echo %%i >> %%~ni.txt)
pause

......[Long period of thinking goes by]

I was going to say something but I'm going to semi start over here, after a few days of grinding away at this (sometimes with little to no sleep) I have files everywhere & I need to get a little organized with what I'm doing because I'm starting to confuse myself & lose track of what I'm doing.

Will update in a few hours....

 

[Gunslinger2]

9 hours now on and off I've been working on organizing a Google Doc spreadsheet containing all relevant info to this project.

[URL Removed]

....and still editing it. Should be easier to come up with a game plan to create a .bat file or script to organize everything with all the information in one place.

 

[Gunslinger2]

Marking as [SOLVED]

Appreciate all the help Duzzy but the long hours attempting this and the Google Spreadsheet having a major malfunction and becoming FUBAR was the straw the broke the camel's back.

 

[Duzzy]

Ok. If you get into it again at a later date just continue this thread if you would like more help.

If you want to organize artist with songs via spreadsheet I recommend downloading OpenOffice and save regularly creating a backup each time you save so you always have a 2nd copy if the 1st gets corrupted.

OpenOffice spreadsheet app is called Calc.