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I have a group of folders that all have zip files in them that may contain 1 or 2 files in them each in a new folder. (see diagram below)

I want to point the script at the top level directory and have it to go through each sub directory, extract the contents of the zip, move the contents of that sub directory up one level (deleting the original zipped file optional).

--before--

Photos

-2018

--jan.zip

[--jan1     ]--

[---jan1.pdf]---}-contents of Zipped file

[---jan1.JPG]--/

--feb.zip

[--feb1     ]--

[---feb1.pdf]---}-contents of Zipped file

[---feb1.JPG]--/

...



--after--

Photos

-2018

--jan1.pdf

--jan1.JPG

--feb1.pdf

--feb1.JPG

Before executing anything of the following, please do a (recursive) copy of your top level directory—just to be safe.

Than you can achieve what you want like so:

Make the top level directory (photos) your current working directory. Then extract all the zip files:

find . -iname "*.zip" -execdir unzip {} ;

Now move the contents of the extracted directories one level up:

find . -type f ! -iname "*.zip" -execdir mv "$(basename {})" .. ;

This will not touch the zip files nor the extracted directories themselves, which become empty in this step. So you can delete them now:

find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -delete

Before you delete the zip files, double check that everything is okay. Then you can do the deletion with

find . -iname "*.zip" -delete

In principle you can combine these commands to a script, but I suggest to test them first one by one checking the result after each step.

A script that takes your top level directory as its sole argument, can look like this:

#!/bin/bash

cd "$1"

find . -iname "*.zip" -execdir unzip {} ;

find . -type f ! -iname "*.zip" -execdir mv "$(basename {})" .. ;

find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -delete

find . -iname "*.zip" -delete

If you give it the name "extract" (and set the execution permission), it can be used in its own directory like this (assuming ~/photos as your top level directory):

./extract ~/photos

But beware: This script was never tested. It also does no tests by its own. It depends on exactly the directory and zip file structure that you describe. So please do copies and test runs.