mimesort

Mimesort is used to sort files and folders into labeled folders based on MIME types. When deciding what MIME classification to use for a folder, mimesort checks the MIME type of every file within the folder and will classify a folder based on the most commonly occurring type. By default, if the MIME types that occur in a folder are not all the same, the folder is classified as "mixed." This can be changed by adjusting the diversity threshold. The diversity of a folder is determined by the Shannon index of the MIME types of its contents.

I have a nightly entry in my crontab that I use to sort my downloads directory:

mimesort.py  -d .6  ~/Downloads

A Shannon index threshold of 0.6 does a good job of classifying folders to my liking, but I recommend doing some dry-runs to see works best for you.

Usage

The scripts usage is pretty simple:

mimesort.py [OPTIONS] [DIRECTORY... [DESTINATION]]

When no directory is supplied, mimesort works on the current working directory but prompts the user before proceeding. When multiple directories are supplied as arguments, the last folder is used as the destination for the sorted contents of the preceding folders.

Example

~/Downloads$ mimesort -d 0.6 | tail -n15
./shellinabox_2.10-1_amd64.deb                     debian-package
./Bat Euthanasia.pdf                               pdf
./AmazonMP3-1309433311.amz                         plain
./cruisecontrol-bin-2.8.4                    1.566 mixed
./WebShell-0.9.6                             1.476 mixed
./kien-ctrlp.vim-e50970f.tar.gz                    tar
./531 Manual.pdf                                   pdf
./xflux.tgz                                        tar
./mHXiz.png                                        image
./Full ...otherhood 1-64 (Eng Dub)           0.000 video
./Sunflower-0.1a-26.tgz                            tar
./ipmansubs.zip                                    zip
./Pokemans.mp3                                     audio
./Windo...it-English-Developer.iso                 iso9660-image
./amazonmp3                                  0.000 debian-package

~/Downloads$ ls
audio           iso9660-image   pdf                     shellscript
csv             java-archive    plain                   tar
debian-package  java-jnlp-file  postscript              unknown
document        message         redhat-package-manager  video
executable      mixed           ruby                    xml
image           msdos-program   sh                      zip

Options

-h

Displays a brief overview of the command line arguments accepted by mimesort.

-d NUMBER

Defines the threshold for determining whether or not a folder is classified as "mixed" instead of the most commonly occurring MIME type. The default threshold is 0.0.

-i

Tells the script not to try to sort folders that, based on the folder names, appears to already be sorted.

-n

Displays a list of files, folders, their Shannon index values and classifications but does not actually move anything around. This is essentially a dry-run.

-m

Do not use magic file libraries even if they are available. This is useful for categorizing large quantities of files since the magic file libraries read data from the file to determine its type, but the classifications will generally be less accurate.

-y

When mimesort is called without any arguments, it will attempt to sort the current working directory but prompts the user before doing so. This argument eliminates the prompt and will sort the current working directory immediately.