better documentation.

Ok. We beefed that up. I added a use statement for my perfect perl, which is 5.30. I don't know what the current one is, and maybe we should slow down the advance of the number, since it's the only one this language gets, as the legacy language that it is. There will be no perl 7, and perl 6 turned into Raku. So we better start conserving 5.

parametrization of hardcoded variables by CLI

I didn't get what you meant, but I asked chatgpt, and they hooked it up. You know it wasn't me if it works.

a test suit for your requirements

I devised a couple. On one I changed the target path:

Processing complete! Number of files created: 492
File type counts (sorted from greatest to least):
png: 345
jpg: 67
jpeg: 61
mp4: 18
gif: 1
(base) Merrills-Mac-mini:Documents mymac$ ./3.list.pl --target /Users/
+mymac/Pictures/LanX
Created target directory: /Users/mymac/Pictures/LanX
Starting to process files in /Users/mymac/Documents/Suite...
Skipping: . (not a file)
Skipping file: .DS_Store (not an image or video)
[download]

I set a couple breakpoints and went over it in the debugger and liked what I saw.

Current source:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
# Script to organize and convert image files in a source directory
# Authors: Aldebaran and ChatGPT. 09-06-2024
# For educational purposes only. Authors assume no liability.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------
# This script processes image and video files from a specified source 
+directory.
# It sorts files into directories based on their modification date (ye
+ar, month, day),
# converts HEIC files to JPG, and renames files to a standardized form
+at.
# It ensures no file is overwritten and removes the original files aft
+er processing.
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------

use strict;
use warnings;
use v5.30; # Aldebaran’s “right perl”
use File::Find;
use File::Path qw(make_path);
use File::Copy qw(move);
use POSIX qw(strftime);
use Getopt::Long;

# Default source and target directories
my $source_dir = '/Users/mymac/Documents/Suite';
my $target_dir = '/Users/mymac/Documents/Test1';

# Get source and target directories from CLI arguments
GetOptions(
    "source=s" => \$source_dir,
    "target=s" => \$target_dir,
) or die "Error in command line arguments\n";

# Check if the source directory exists
unless (-d $source_dir) {
    die "Source directory $source_dir does not exist.\n";
}

# Create the target directory if it doesn't exist
unless (-d $target_dir) {
    make_path($target_dir) or die "Failed to create target directory $
+target_dir: $!\n";
    print "Created target directory: $target_dir\n";
}

# Hash to store file type counts and total file count
my %file_types;
my $file_count = 0;
$DB::single = 1;
# Subroutine to process each file
sub process_file {
    # Only process files
    if (-f $_) {
        # Extract file extension and convert to lowercase
        my ($ext) = $_ =~ /\.([^.]+)$/;
        $ext = lc $ext if defined $ext;  # Convert to lowercase
        
        # Only process specific file types
        if (defined $ext && $ext =~ /^(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|bmp|tiff|heic|
+mp4|mov)$/) {
            print "Processing file: $_\n";
            $DB::single = 1;
            my $file_path = $File::Find::name;
            print "File path: $file_path\n";
            
            # Get file modification time and format it
            my $mod_time = (stat($file_path))[9];
            my $date = strftime "%Y_%m_%d", localtime($mod_time);
            my ($year, $month, $day) = split('_', $date);

            # Create destination directory based on file date
            my $dest_dir = "$target_dir/$year/$month";
            unless (-d $dest_dir) {
                make_path($dest_dir) or die "Failed to create destinat
+ion directory $dest_dir: $!\n";
                print "Created destination directory: $dest_dir\n";
            }

            # Initialize file counter for the current date
            my $count = 1;
            my $new_file_name;

            # Convert HEIC files to JPG
            if ($ext eq 'heic') {
                $new_file_name = "${year}_${month}_${day}_$count.jpg";
                # Ensure unique file name
                while (-e "$dest_dir/$new_file_name") {
                    $count++;
                    $new_file_name = "${year}_${month}_${day}_$count.j
+pg";
                }
                
                my $converted_file_path = "$dest_dir/$new_file_name";
                my $convert_command = "heif-convert $file_path $conver
+ted_file_path";
                system($convert_command) == 0 or die "Failed to conver
+t $file_path: $!\n";
                unlink $file_path or warn "Failed to delete original f
+ile $file_path: $!\n";
                print "Converted and moved: $file_path -> $converted_f
+ile_path\n";

                # Increment file type count
                $file_types{'jpg'}++;
            } else {
                $new_file_name = "${year}_${month}_${day}_$count.$ext"
+;
                # Ensure unique file name
                while (-e "$dest_dir/$new_file_name") {
                    $count++;
                    $new_file_name = "${year}_${month}_${day}_$count.$
+ext";
                }
                
                move($file_path, "$dest_dir/$new_file_name") or die "F
+ailed to move file $file_path: $!\n";
                unlink $file_path or warn "Failed to delete original f
+ile $file_path: $!\n";
                print "Moved and renamed: $file_path -> $dest_dir/$new
+_file_name\n";

                # Increment file type count
                $file_types{$ext}++;
            }

            # Increment total file count
            $file_count++;
        } else {
            print "Skipping file: $_ (not an image or video)\n";
        }
    } else {
        print "Skipping: $_ (not a file)\n";
    }
}

# Find and process files in the source directory
print "Starting to process files in $source_dir...\n";
find(\&process_file, $source_dir);

# Print the summary of processed files
print "Processing complete! Number of files created: $file_count\n";
print "File type counts (sorted from greatest to least):\n";

# Sort and print the file type counts
foreach my $type (sort { $file_types{$b} <=> $file_types{$a} } keys %f
+ile_types) {
    print "$type: $file_types{$type}\n";
}
[download]

I'm not gonna say that I haven't lost files in the testing. What I have now looks all lined up, concise, clean.

(base) Merrills-Mac-mini:2023 mymac$ cd 06
(base) Merrills-Mac-mini:06 mymac$ ll
total 799096
drwxr-xr-x   4 mymac  staff        128 Jun  9 23:38 ./
drwxr-xr-x  12 mymac  staff        384 Jun  9 23:41 ../
-rw-r--r--@  1 mymac  staff   45958033 Jun 21  2023 2023_06_21_1.mov
-rw-r--r--@  1 mymac  staff  363174818 Jun 21  2023 2023_06_21_2.mov
(base) Merrills-Mac-mini:06 mymac$
[download]

Cheers,