Moving millions of files to a different directory with specfic name patterns

You should use:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '??????????_a1ac*.jpg' \
-exec mv -t destination "{}" +

So maxdepth 1 means that you want to search in current directory no subdirectories.

type f means find only files.

name '??????????_a1ac*.jpg' is a pattern that matches with file you are searching.

mv -t destination "{}" + means move matched files to destination. Here + adds new matched files to previous one like:

mv -t dest a b c d

Here a b c d are different files.

Your command,

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | ??????????_a1ac*.jpg |xargs mv -t "/home/ubuntu/ntest"

Pipes the list of all the files TO all the files!

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name `*_a1ac*.jpg` -print0 |\
xargs  -0 -r mv -t "/home/ubuntu/ntest"

will do the trick.

You're very close. You should use the -name option to find. And remember to quote the pattern.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '??????????_a1ac*.jpg' |xargs mv -t "/home/ubuntu/ntest"

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