Small metatag / file renaming script: what "stuff" should I be using?

Question

Hi!
I need a small script that moves all videos, images and other files in a folder to
./year-month/day-hour-minute-seconds_originalfilename.ext
The date/time is supposed to come from the meta tags if the file has its own timestamp and from the file stats (creation date) if no meta data is available.
Now, this is how I would usually do something like this:
1) Install exiv2 and mediainfo and various other cli-tools that can extract timestamps from file meta data.
2) Mess around with those programs until after piping the output trough about 200 grep's and sed's I get a line of bash for everything I need.
3) Stick those lines together somehow into one huge mess consisting basically of just one single giant line of bash that inexplicably does the job
4) Instantly forget how it works and somehow accidental mess up my whole system the next time I try to modify & execute the script.
I already almost finished a bash script that works like that. And broke it. And don't understand how it works any more, so I was about to start over... but at the moment I guess I might have just enough spare time to do it right instead... so...
- What's would be the "right" way to do something like this?
- Should I just learn how to use functions instead of pipes or forget about bash and try python?
- Still use regex to fiddle it together or use something that can handle date/time as actual date+time instead of putting it into a string?
- Use various external tools (like exiv2 and mediainfo from the repos) or take something that has... uhm... API's or something... to handle... tag stuff itsself?
- What language / tools / methods would a programmer that knows all there is to know choose for a job like this?
I've written a lot of small scripts and a few "programs" in the past but never really got around to learn programming... for some reason I just got used to do everything I needed with only a few functions, loops and a lot of trying around + copy&paste somehow even if the code gets insanely awkward & impractical... so... I have no idea where to start looking for a "good" solution to this problem.
Any hints?
Thx!

Answer 1

Argh, I tried - seems to work but I made a mess again and just looking at it confuses me. It's not as bad as usual, but still...:
(replaced the mv's + mkdir's by echo's for "debugging" purposes:)
#!/bin/zsh
pushd "$1" && {
basefolder=$(readlink -fn "$1")
find ./ -type f -print0 | sort | while read -d $'\0' file
do
echo -n "#"
unset year minute hour day month TIME second newname fname dname debout part1 part2 part3
fname=$(basename "$file")
dname=$(dirname "$file")
filethm=$(echo $file | sed "s/...$/THM/")
file "$filethm" | grep -q "image" && {
exiv2 pr "$filethm" | grep -a stamp | sed "s/.*\(....:..:.. .*\)/\1/" | sort | grep -Ev "[[:alpha:]]" | head -n1 |\
IFS=" -:" read year month day hour minute second bla bla bla;
debout="INFO for $file pulled from $filethm: $year-$month-$day $hour-$minute-$second"
part1="$year-$month-$day"
part2="$hour-$minute-$second"
echo "$part1 - $part2" | grep -q -E "^[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-1][0-9]-[0-3][0-9] - [0-2][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]" ||\
file "$file" | grep -q "image" && {
exiv2 pr "$file" | grep -a stamp | sed "s/.*\(....:..:.. .*\)/\1/" | sort | grep -Ev "[[:alpha:]]" | head -n1 |\
IFS=" -:" read year month day hour minute second bla bla bla;
part1="$year-$month-$day"
part2="$hour-$minute-$second"
echo "$part1 - $part2" | grep -q -E "^[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-1][0-9]-[0-3][0-9] - [0-2][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]" ||\
mediainfo "$file" | grep -q date && {
mediainfo "$file" | grep -a date | sed "s/.*\(....-..-.. .*\)/\1/" | sort | grep -Ev "[[:alpha:]]" | head -n1 | IFS=" -:" \
read year month day hour minute second bla bla bla;
unset IFS
part1="$year-$month-$day"
part2="$hour-$minute-$second"
part3=$(echo $fname | sed "s/^[0-2][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]_//");
echo "$part1 - $part2" | grep -q -E "^[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-1][0-9]-[0-3][0-9] - [0-2][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]-[0-5][0-9]" ||\
debout="$debout No meta data for $file ($part1-$part2), taking creation date + filename: "
# Get year-month-day
part1=$(stat -c%y "$file" | awk -F " |:|\\\.|-" '{printf $1"-"$2"-"$3}')
# Get hour-minute-second
part2=$(stat -c%y "$file" | awk -F " |:|\\\.|-" '{printf $4"-"$5"-"$6}')
debout="$debout ${part1}/${part2}_${part3}";
# Destination filename
newname=./${part1}/${part2}_${part3};
[ "$newname" != "$file" ] && {\
echo $debout;
if ! [ -d $(dirname "$newname") ]
then echo mkdir -p $(dirname "$newname") -v
fi
echo mv "$file" "$newname" -v --backup=numbered
done
popd
Also, for some reason it doesn't work with bash. Only zsh. No idea why.
I just have accumulated too many bad habits with bash I guess... Any hints on how I should proceed now?
Throw the whole script away and try to learn python? xD
Last edited by whoops (2012-11-30 14:05:33)