Wildcard in filename question

[philbond87]

I'm trying to run a  -tagsFromFile command on a folder of files however I only want the operation to affect filenames in the folder that contain a specific string.

Is that possible and, if so, how would I structure the command?

Thanks,
Phil

[StarGeek]

As long as you aren't recursing into subdirectories, you can just use the asterisk *.  As an example
exiftool -TagsFromFile /path/to/source/%f.%d -DateTimeOriginal /path/to/target/file*SpecificString*

If you need to affect all files with the specific string in all sub-directories, it's a bit more complex as you can't use the asterisk wildcard (see -r (recurse) option and Common Mistake #2).  It will require the -if option and some sort of pattern matching, usually RegEx.  You use a directory as the target path.  To process the current directory, use a dot .
exiftool -if "$Filename=~/SpecificString/i" -TagsFromFile /path/to/source/%f.%d -DateTimeOriginal /path/to/target/files/

If you're on Mac/Linux, swap the double/single quotes.

[philbond87]

Very helpful, thanks for the tips!

[philbond87]

Ok, of course that worked.

Is there a way to include a conditional?
What I'd ultimately like to do is – in addition to performing the operation on a file with a particular string in the file name – I'd like to ignore a handful of file types (particular extensions).

Thanks again

[StarGeek]

Just add the condition as show above.  Order doesn't matter for most options, you just can't split options that need an additional argument like -TagsFromFile or -if.  For ease you can just drop it onto the end.

To ignore a filetype, use the -ext (extension) option.  Use two dashes to ignore a file type e.g. --ext avi to ignore avi files.  Though avi files would normally be skipped as they are not editable by exiftool.