Dedirectorizer

A very simple bash script used to copy the contents of a directory in a manner such that subdirectories are eliminated but the structure is preserved via the naming. Perhaps better understood via illustration

Original Folder

├── dir1
│   ├── file1
│   └── subdir1
│       └── file2
├── dir2
│   └── file2
├── file4
└── dir3
    └── subdir2
        ├── subsubdir1
        │   └──file6
        └── file5

is copied as

dedirectorized Folder

├── dir1.file1
├── dir1.subdir1.file2
├── dir2.file2
├── file4
├── dir3.subdir2.subsubdir1.file6
├── dir3.subdir2.file5

Usage

There are two ways of utilizing this script. Both ways require you to download dedirectorize.sh to your machine.

Option 1 - Use within the folder

Place dedirectorize.sh into the directory you wish to dedirectorize. Then in a terminal open in that specific directory, type

bash dedirectorize.sh

A directory named dedirectorized should appear containing the output described above.

Option 2 - Use within any folder

You may wish to be able to call dedirectorize.sh from any directory without having to move dedirectorize.sh to the desired directory each time. To achieve this,

1. create a directory called bin in your $HOME directory. mkdir -p $HOME/bin should be sufficient.
2. Place dedirectorize.sh in into it so that you have $HOME/bin/dedirectorize.sh.
3. Depending on your system edit your .bashrc or .bash_profile file so to include the line export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
4. Make dedirectorize.sh executable by entering chmod +x $HOME/bin/dedirectorize.sh into the terminal

You should now be able to write dedirectorize.sh into any terminal directory and succesfully run the script.

Why?

For a certain university assignment, I was asked if I could share my project files on the university portal as I made progress throughout. On my machine, my project files were neatly organized in directories, subdirectories etc. The university portal fileshare system however did not support the creation of folders. As such I decided to embed my project directory structure into the filenames to make the organization clear on the portal despite the lack of folders.

NB: I of course considered simply using a .zip file but opted not to as this would require me to re-upload my entire project each time I decided to update the university portal fileshare.

This is also truly my first custom bash script (so may be not that good/smart) as I wanted to learn/get better at this particular topic