Simple sorting program for folders/files

Question

Hello comunity,
I would like to make a simple sorting program which will scan through some folder looking for files with different extensions. Then copy files of the same format (example *.pdf) and (create) place them into folder with the name of the extension. After that the program (script) should look for another extension and do the similar operation to them untill all files will be moved. I am new to applescript and automator.app, so could you please put me on the right direction which programmin (script) language should I use. Sample code and good tips would be usefull too. Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

This is not a hard thing to do. If you want to write it yourself, and have some background in programming, I recommend to read a book on AppleScript and start writing the code in AppleScript Editor.
The AppleScript Language Guide is a free reference book by Apple which you can download it. There are a lot of sample codes on the net too.
You should use the Finder dictionary to do this work. Finder is a scriptable application in Mac, which has a dictionary. This dictionary describes about the objects inside the finder that do all the duties of the Finder and you can call them directly in AppleScript to automate things. Open AppleScript editor, go to Window > Library and double click on Finder. This will open the dictionary. Note that all the objects in scriptable applications have a hierarchical relationship, starting from the root "application" object. You can read the dictionary to get familiar with the objects in the Finder app and know how to use them.
Here is some code:
tell application "Finder"
  tell the front window
  log (count of items of it)  -- prints the count of items in the window
  make new folder in it with properties {name:"mani"} -- makes a new folder named: mani
  make new file in it with properties {name:"test", extension:"txt"} -- makes a new text file
  repeat with x in every file in the items of it
      log the name of x
  end repeat
  end tell
end tell
If you can program in Objective-C and not have enough time to learn AppleScript, you can use Scripting Bridge technology to automate scriptable applications using Objective-C. This is so much better because enables you to debug your code or execute it line by line, which is not possible when working with AppleScript Editor.
Hope this helps