Week 03 - CLI File Organiser

See original block post here.

For the third week of my uni project challenge, I built a CLI file organiser using Rust. This tool helps users quickly organise their files into folders based on their file extension.

Features

• Organises files in a specified directory into folders based on their sort option (e.g., by file extension, by date, and size)
• Supports selecting directories and excluding specific files or patterns
• Optional prefix for sorted folders to avoid naming conflicts (e.g., "Sorted_")
• Dry-run mode to preview changes without modifying files

Usage

To use the CLI file organiser, you can run the following command in your terminal: (using release)

./cli-file-organiser --help
Usage: cli-file-organiser [OPTIONS]
 
Options:
  -d, --directory <DIRECTORY>  Directory to sort (default: current directory) [default: .]
  -e, --exclude <EXCLUDE>...   Files to exclude (e.g. 'file.txt' or '*.txt')
  -p, --prefix <PREFIX>        Prefix for new directories (e.g. 'Sorted_') [default: ]
  -s, --sort <SORT>            How should files be sorted? [default: type] [possible values: type, date, size]
      --dry-run                Don't actually move files, just show what would be done
  -h, --help                   Print help

For example, to organise files in the "Downloads" folder by type, excluding any .txt files, and adding a "Sorted_" prefix to the new folders, you would run:

./cli-file-organiser -d ~/Downloads -e "*.txt" -p "Sorted_"

Running this project

Clone the repository and navigate to the project directory:

git clone https://github.com/Jimster4312/rust-cli-file-organiser.git
cd rust-cli-file-organiser

Install the dependencies:

cargo build --release

Test the CLI tool:

./target/release/cli-file-organiser --help

This will display the help message with usage instructions. You can then use the CLI tool to organise your files as needed.

Thanks for checking out my project!