sort substrings of filenames, giving unique values

FWIW - I had fun "developing" this simple routine which will list the unique artists among a listing of several hundred files in a single directory of MP3 files

Based on pattern "artist - title.mp3"

Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object {($_.basename -split ("-"))[0]} | Select-Object -unique


What I would like to do now is have a count next to each unique name (i.e. Duke Ellington - 4 Doris Day - 6

Not sure how to do this but it is probably very simple. Was tryng to use the group statement, but no luck

Bill Clark, Windham,VT

1 Answer
1

Assuming all your files follow that pattern:

Get-ChildItem -File |
Group-Object -Property {$_.BaseName.Split('-')[0]}


This will automatically group all the strings returned from the previous item in the pipeline.

Then you can do additional fun things with this:

Get-ChildItem -File |
Group-Object -Property {$_.BaseName.Split('-')[0]} |
ForEach-Object {
$dir = "$([IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName($_.Group[0].FullName))$($_.Name)"
if (-not (Test-Path -Path $dir -PathType Container)) {
New-Item -Path $dir -ItemType Directory
}

foreach ($file in $_.Group) {
$file | Copy-Item -Destination $dir -Force
}
}


And now all your songs are sorted by artist in folders.

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