Split a folder with many files into subfolders with N files. Usage: python folder_splitter.py path/to/target/folder

folder_splitter.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# @author: Peter Lamut

import argparse
import os
import shutil

N = 10  # the number of files in seach subfolder folder


def move_files(abs_dirname):
    """Move files into subdirectories."""

    files = [os.path.join(abs_dirname, f) for f in os.listdir(abs_dirname)]

    i = 0
    curr_subdir = None

    for f in files:
        # create new subdir if necessary
        if i % N == 0:
            subdir_name = os.path.join(abs_dirname, '{0:03d}'.format(i / N + 1))
            os.mkdir(subdir_name)
            curr_subdir = subdir_name

        # move file to current dir
        f_base = os.path.basename(f)
        shutil.move(f, os.path.join(subdir_name, f_base))
        i += 1


def parse_args():
    """Parse command line arguments passed to script invocation."""
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
        description='Split files into multiple subfolders.')

    parser.add_argument('src_dir', help='source directory')

    return parser.parse_args()


def main():
    """Module's main entry point (zopectl.command)."""
    args = parse_args()
    src_dir = args.src_dir

    if not os.path.exists(src_dir):
        raise Exception('Directory does not exist ({0}).'.format(src_dir))

    move_files(os.path.abspath(src_dir))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

With python3, I got error

    subdir_name = os.path.join(abs_dirname, '{0:03d}'.format(i / N + 1))
ValueError: Unknown format code 'd' for object of type 'float'

Fixed by updating line 22:

subdir_name = os.path.join(abs_dirname, '{0:03d}'.format(i // N + 1))

Thanks @hyzyla ... This edit worked for me in python3.8
Thanks @zupo ... I was searching for the exact script ...

Thanks

This is awesome. My requirement is exactly similar to this. I want to move upto 200 files into each folder but with file start characters by nesting it.
For example,
If filename starts with 'absolute.txt', 'ab.txt', 'bingo.txt' it would be moved to "a" folder after that inside "a" folder, if files are more than 200 it need to create another folder inside "a" as "aa",ab" and so on, after that inside "aa" if there is more than 200 files inside "aa" folder it would need to create "aaa","aab" and so on.
This will make organize easy to get to required file

I posted this snippet years back and people still use it, can't believe it. 😄

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