# File management sample codes?

**URL:** <https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/file-management-sample-codes/27613>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Tags:** file, example\
**Created:** [December 16, 2019, 4:50pm UTC](https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/file-management-sample-codes/27613 "2019-12-16T16:50:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![elsatch](https://forum.elixirforum.com/user_avatar/forum.elixirforum.com/elsatch/32/17671_2.png) [@elsatch](https://forum.elixirforum.com/u/elsatch)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 8:24am UTC](https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/file-management-sample-codes/27613/3 "2019-12-17T08:24:05Z")

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Thanks for your response @dimitarvp! I believe managing files using sqlite3 can be very beneficial for particular scenarios. I could create hashes from files and then work with those IDs but my scenarios are quite more mundane. Let me walk through some of them.

Example 1: I regularly dump all my videos and pictures from different sources in a folder. I want to sort them into different folders based on the extension. So I would have a folder for JPG files, another one for PNG files, etc. My files are named IMG\_XXXX.jpg. The names roll over each 10.000 pictures, so I have to take care not to overwrite any existing files.

So, in pseudo code it would be something like this:

1. List all the files in given directory
2. For each file:  
a) Check if there is a folder with the same name as the file extension. If it doesn’t exist, create the folder.  
b) Check if there is a file with the same name as the current file in the extension directory. If it does exist, rename existing file adding \_1 to the end of the name (or \_2,\_3) to prevent overwrites.  
c) Move file to its extension directory.

Reviewing the File doc, my initial take would be to make something like this (Note: this doesn’t work, is pseudo elixir).

```elixir
defmodule sort_files_by_extension do
  def sort_files do
    File.ls!("./test")
    |> Enum.each(fn filename -> [name | extension] = String.split(filename, ".") end)
    |> Enum.each(&check_extension_dir/1)
    |> Enum.each(&check_duplicate_files/2)
    |> Enum.each(&move_extension_directory/2)

  defp check_extension_dir extension do
      File.exists?("./#{extension}")
      File.dir?("./#{extension}")
      # If both checks are false, then create the dir
  end

  defp check_duplicate_files name, extension do
    File.exists?("#{extension}/#{filename}")
    # If file exists, append _n to name, checking for duplicates again    
  end

  defp move_to_extension_directory name, extension do
    File.rename!("./#{filename}", "./#{extension}/#{name}"   
  end
end

```

I’ve been reading Pragmatic Programming book and on the if topic, there is this advice: try to work with functions instead of resorting to classical imperative if/then flows. So right now, I feel I’m a bit handicapped in the middle ground: without too much knowledge about functional and avoiding imperative structures. Any comments or improvements to make this work are kindly welcome!

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