Sort photos based on name in powershell - powershell

Question

I have used Advanced Renamer to rename all my photos by date, so they all have names such as:
2017-Oct-14_8;39_kyd.jpg
Where "8;39" is the time and "kyd" is a string of three random characters to reduce eliminate duplicate names. I would like to write a powershell script to sort them all into folders such as:
C:\Pictures\2017\Oct
Where the first directory would be the year and the second directory would be the month. If a photo does not have date taken metadata, it's name would be:
"--_;_kyd.jpg"
and I would like to sort it into a "MANUAL_SORT" folder located is C:\Pictures. I am trying to use powershell to do this and this is what I have so far:
$SourceFolder = 'C:\Pictures\Test'
$DestinationFolder = 'C:\Pictures\Test_Output'
Get-ChildItem -Path $SourceFolder -Filter *.jpg | ForEach-Object
{
$filename = $_.Name.Substring(0,7);
if ($filename.Substring(0,3) = "--_;")
{
Move-Item -Path $SourceFolder -Destination "$DestinationFolder\MAUNAL_SORT"
}
else
{
$Year = $filename.Substring(0,3)
$Month = $filename.Substring(5,7)
Move-Item -Path $SourceFolder -Destination $DestinationFolder\$Year\$Month
}
}
But I can't figure out how to use the ForEach-Object command to cycle through each picture. Can anyone suggest a method to accomplish this? Thank you!

Answer 1

It looks like you're using Move-Item incorrectly. Use $_.FullName as the argument to the -Path parameter. As written, you're repeatedly trying to move the entire source folder into the destination.
Your string comparison operations are wrong. Use -eq.
Your substring calls are getting one too few characters. The parameters are index and count. Index is zero-based, of course, but count is the actual number of characters you want.
Also, the $filename variable is only accomplishing an extra call to Substring(), it's not useful in the rest of the script.
gci $SourceFolder -Filter *.jpg | foreach {
$YYYY = $_.Name.Substring(0,4)
if ($YYYY -eq '--_;') {
mv $_.FullName $DestinationFolder\MANUAL_SORT\
} else {
$MM = $_.Name.Substring(5,3)
mv $_.FullName $DestinationFolder\$YYYY\$MM\
}
}

Answer 2

A couple of issues:
substring of name while retrieving filename, removed that code
if condition comparison - it should be '-eq'
Also please verify folder exists or not added #TODO
Get-ChildItem -Path $SourceFolder -Filter *.jpg | ForEach-Object {
$filename = $_.Name;
if ($filename.Substring(0,3) -eq "--_")
{
Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination "$DestinationFolder\MAUNAL_SORT\"
}
else
{
$Year = $filename.Substring(0,3)
$Month = $filename.Substring(5,7)
#TODO: test path if directory exists else create it
Move-Item -Path $_.FullName -Destination $DestinationFolder\$Year\$Month
}
}