Windows-Folder-Flattener

• Windows command-line tool to flatten folders.

What it does

• If you have something like below: a root folder (root_directory) with multiple sub-folders (a, b, c), each of which has files (e.g. a_1.txt) and further sub-folders (e.g. c_2), you can use it to move all those files to the root directory, hence flattening the base folder.

C:\root_directory
        +---a
        |   \---a_1
        |           a_1.txt
        |
        +---b
        |       b_1.txt
        |
        \---c
            \---c_1
                \---c_2
                        c_2.txt

Usage

• Run flattener.exe c:\root_directory. The above folder will be flattened into (notice now the sub-folders like a, b, c, a_1, c_1, c_2 are emptied):

C:\root_directory
        |   a_1.txt
        |   b_1.txt
        |   c_2.txt
        |
        +---a
        |   \---a_1
        +---b
        \---c
            \---c_1
                \---c_2

• If you don't want to keep those empitied sub-folders, you could have ran flatten c:\root_directory -d instead. You will get:

C:\root_directory
      |   a_1.txt
      |   b_1.txt
      |   c_2.txt

2nd Usage

• You can also do the same with the sub-folders as the "sub-root folder", and move the files under them not to the one root folder, but to their respective "sub-root folder".
• To do this, you can run flatten c:\root_directory -s. That will get you:

C:\root_directory
+---a
|   |   a_1.txt
|   |
|   \---a_1
+---b
|       b_1.txt
|
\---c
    \---c_1
        \---c_2

• Again, you can clean it with flatten c:\root_directory -s -d so that you have:

C:\root_directory
      +---a
      |       a_1.txt
      |
      +---b
      |       b_1.txt
      |
      \---c
              c_2.txt

Options

• -c: use the current folder as root folder.
• -d: delete empty sub-folders after flattening.
• -s: use immediate sub-folders as "sub root folders".

Change Log

2020-01-05: v 0.1