put-cli

put is an ISC-licensed command-line utility to move, rename, copy and symlink files. put uses a simple placeholder syntax to transform input filenames to output filenames. Think of it as an easier-to-use but perhaps less powerful Linux rename.

Usage

# copy files 
put 'app/config/nginx/{type}' '/etc/nginx/{type}.conf'
 
# move or rename files 
put --move 'music/{title} - {album} ({artist})' 'music/{artist} - {title}'
 
# symlink files 
put --link 'posts/{year}/images/{slug}' 'build/images/{year}-{slug}'

Any intermediate directories that don't yet exist will be created for you. It acts like mkdir -p and rename glued together, if you will.

See put --help for more details.

Install using npm install put-cli -g. You'll need to have node.js installed for this to work.

Status

Works for me, but needs unit tests before it can be declared safe for public consumption.

Limitations and roadmap

• put has no way to limit which file types it operates on, though the ability to specify either a list of extensions or a file type (image, data, document) is planned.
• put can symlink or move directories, but it can't copy a directory (yet).
• put will never overwrite a file. There is no command-line flag or other option to force this or decide interactively. This is a precaution, as this utility currently lacks any sort of tests and I don't want to destroy anybody's filesystem. As tests are added, this restriction will be removed.
• put requires the NPM package installer and a working Node.js setup. It needs OS packages.

Use from node.js

The put-cli library exposes copy, move and link functions. They all have the same interface:

fn(source, destination, options, callback)

Options and callback are optional.

For example:

var put = require('put');
var source = 'images/{year}-{description}-{width}x{height}';
var destination = 'images/{year}/{description}';
var options = {verbose: true};
put.move(source, destination, options, function(err) {
    console.log('done!');
});