fish scripts to clean up my notes directory export from Notion

some-fish-scripts.md

I exported all of my personal daily notes from my previous job, taken in Notion, over almost three years. The export was well-structured, but not very nice to look at or edit in a text editor, because each day was exported in its own file. I used fish shell on the command line to rename the files and directories and combine some of the files.

A further improvement could be to rename the daily notes to be ##-Day instead of Day-## so that the days would be in order in the compiled files. I decided to not do this right now since I plan to edit the collated files down to essential summaries of tasks, so the order of the days isn't terribly important. This is all to help me update my LinkedIn/resume description for my past job.

For a directory of folders and markdown files with the following structure:

2021 b66912b4b62d499aab303e5ecf48e052/
├─ January 344309c9fec64bcc8296025112a5691d/
│  ├─ Week 01 bf2bf63b13ad4ce38b780b1d6b8c0383/
│  │  ├─ Monday 04 369b1290b92540908b3a1926bf54acd7.md
│  │  ├─ Tuesday 05 23ffbc8ef39640d1bfb395a977104ccc.md
│  │  ├─ ...
│  ├─ Week 02 5471003441e04783be84f83a418282bd/
│  │  ├─ Monday 11 35fdf92223294f17bc4d8c33077c8545.md
│  │  ├─ ...
│  ├─ ...
├─ February 1735c8e4ee354be9b545619daa9ca2d0/
│  ├─ Week 01 666023d3c46e4a9e99926971c4af5588/
│  │  ├─ Monday 01 6e0fc07a92a54b12b3c48f5581df775a.md
│  │  ├─ ...
│  ├─ ...
│  ...

Remove the hash from the filenames:

for file in **/*.md;\
  echo (basename $file .md)\
  | string match -r '^(\w* ){0,2}'\
  | string trim\
  | read output;\
  set path (dirname $file);\
  mv $file "$path/$output.md";\
end

Results

2021 b66912b4b62d499aab303e5ecf48e052/
├─ January 344309c9fec64bcc8296025112a5691d/
│  ├─ Week 01 bf2bf63b13ad4ce38b780b1d6b8c0383/
│  │  ├─ Monday 04.md
│  │  ├─ Tuesday 05.md
│  ├─ Week 02 5471003441e04783be84f83a418282bd/
│  │  ├─ Monday 11.md
├─ February 1735c8e4ee354be9b545619daa9ca2d0/
│  ├─ Week 01 666023d3c46e4a9e99926971c4af5588/
│  │  ├─ Monday 01.md

Remove the hash from the directory names:

for dir in (find . -d -type d); echo $dir |
  if test $dir != '.';
    string replace -r '(\w*)$' '' $dir |
    string trim |
    read output; mv $dir $output;
  end;
end;

Note: the above could be improved by passing a depth paramter to find and removing the if-statement

Results

2021/
├─ January/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 04.md
│  │  ├─ Tuesday 05.md
│  ├─ Week 02/
│  │  ├─ Monday 11.md
├─ February/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 01.md

Function to compile all of the daily notes within a week folder into one file

function compileNotes
  pwd |
  string match -r '[ \\w]*$' |
  read output; set filename "../$output compiled.md";
  echo "# $output" >> $filename;
  for file in ./*.md;
    cat $file >> $filename; echo \n\n >> $filename;
  end;
end

Run the above function within a year folder to traverse into each month folder and compile all of the daily notes into a single file

for dir in (find . -d 2 -type d); echo $dir |
  if test $dir != '.';
  cd $dir; compileNotes; cd -;
  end;
end;

Results

2021/
├─ January/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 04.md
│  │  ├─ Tuesday 05.md
│  ├─ Week 01 compiled.md
│  ├─ Week 02/
│  │  ├─ Monday 11.md
│  ├─ Week 02 compiled.md
├─ February/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 01.md
│  ├─ Week 01 compiled.md

For each month directory with compiled weekly notes, combine the weekly notes into a single file for the month.

for dir in (find . -d 1 -type d);
  echo (string match -r '[ \\w]*$' $dir) | read output;
  set filename "$output compiled.md";
  echo "# $output" >> $filename;
  for file in $dir/**compiled.md;
    cat $file >> $filename;
    echo \n\n >> $filename;
  end;
end

Final results

2021/
├─ January/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 04.md
│  │  ├─ Tuesday 05.md
│  ├─ Week 01 compiled.md
│  ├─ Week 02/
│  │  ├─ Monday 11.md
│  ├─ Week 02 compiled.md
├─ January compiled.md
├─ February/
│  ├─ Week 01/
│  │  ├─ Monday 01.md
│  ├─ Week 01 compiled.md
├─ February compiled.md

Now there's twelve note files for each year, instead of 365 files. \o/