Specifying output path.

[TrevorS]

I'm on a Linux machine, staging all of my images to be moved to a new machine.

I chose to 'cd' to the destination folder and specify paths relative to my home directory for the source.
This and similar commands work...

trevor@trevor-office:~/STAGED_PICS$ exiftool -o-m  . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m -r ~/Pictures

But when I try to collect images from another user's home/pictures folder exiftool seems to operate on the current directory.

trevor@trevor-office:~/STAGED_PICS$ exiftool -o-m  . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m -r /home/emese/Pictures
trevor@trevor-office:~/STAGED_PICS$ exiftool -o-m  . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m -r ~emese/Pictures

Both start processing the images already in STAGED_PICS.

How can I specify a path to this user's folders? I have read access.

I also had a similar problem with a folder of my own that had spaces. I tried single quotes around it and \ before each space.

Thanks

[StarGeek]

One main problem with your command is this part
-o-m  .

I'm guessing that you're trying to use the -o (-out) option and the -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) option, but when they're bunched up like that, you're instead telling exiftool to output the value of the "o-m" tag, which obviously doesn't exist so there's no output for that.  And then since the dot is by itself, it's considered a source for files to process.

Try
-o . -m

[TrevorS]

Thanks. That worked. Some Unix commands take options that way, so it was habit.

But my earlier runs seemed to work (although I may have added the -m later).

I'm still a bit mystified by the . after the -o ;-)  I have used exiftool with a fully qualified destination in -d  and still seemed to need it.

Sorry I posted this in the wrong place at first. I found other posts with titles like "Redirecting output" so I thought it was the place to be.

A little late, but:-

OS is Ubuntu 20.04
exiftool version is 11.88

[StarGeek]

I'm still a bit mystified by the . after the -o ;-)  I have used exiftool with a fully qualified destination in -d  and still seemed to need it.

From the docs I linked above
    When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories specified for either of these tags take precedence over that specified by the -o option.

In this case, you're writing to the Directory pseudo tag.  But -o still requires a second parameter, so it's filled the the path to a dummy directory.  A single dot is the shortest path you can use, so it's the most common example.  You could just as easily used This/is/a/totally/fake/path/ 

See Writing "FileName" and "Directory" tags for more details on the pseudo tags.

Sorry I posted this in the wrong place at first. I found other posts with titles like "Redirecting output" so I thought it was the place to be.

As it says in the main part of the forum, that sub-forum is for "Executing ExifTool from within other applications".  No biggy, it's all pretty casual around here.

[TrevorS]

I wonder if exiftool should have reported my -o-m as an error? Especially since the -o takes a mandatory parameter.

I can write
ls -la
or
ls -l -a
but not
ls -l-a

[StarGeek]

I wonder if exiftool should have reported my -o-m as an error? Especially since the -o takes a mandatory parameter.

How would it tell that by -o-m you meant the -o and not a tag named "o-m"?  Exiftool can list tags that it doesn't necessarily have definitions for, especially with regards to XMP.

[TrevorS]

Sorry - I see now that would be very difficult to  disambiguate.

I need to read the man(1) page more carefully. Thanks for your patience.