I am trying to copy all empty files from the home directory into a folder that is on the desktop, using this:
find ~ -empty -exec cp {} /desktop/emptyfolder \;
However, I can't make it work.
Are there any other possible solutions to achieve this? Or maybe to write a bash script that could do this?
Add -type f to the find command to force it to search for files and not directories and so:
find ~ -empty -type f -exec cp {} /desktop/emptyfolder \;
Related
How can i search for example all .png files on an external disk and copy them to another directory?
Have tried to use the cp command. Have try it but don't work for me
?
Monterey 2.2.1
cp /Volumes/Data *.png /Volumes/Data/pictures_png
cp command won't work if you need to recursively copy from the sub directories. You need to use find.
Syntax:
find $SOURCE -type f -name '*.type' -exec cp '{}' $DESTINATION ';'
In your case,
find /Volumes/Data -type f -name '*.png' -exec cp '{}' /Volumes/Data/pictures_png ';'
Here is how it works:
-type f means copy only files not directories.
-name is to provide the filename to find. Here *.png for pattern matching
-exec executes the following line for each result the above find returns.
{} will be replaced with the results from find
; terminates -exec command
On a unix server, I'm trying to figure out how to remove a file, say "example.xls", from any subdirectories that start with v0 ("v0*").
I have tried something like:
find . -name "v0*" -type d -exec find . -name "example.xls" -type f
-exec rm {} \;
But i get errors. I have a solution but it works too well, i.e. it will delete the file in any subdirectory, regardless of it's name:
find . -type f -name "example.xls" -exec rm -f {} \;
Any ideas?
You will probably have to do it in two steps -- i.e. first find the directories, and then the files -- you can use xargs to make it in a single line, like
find . -name "v0*" -type d | \
xargs -l -I[] \
find [] -name "example.xls" -type f -exec rm {} \;
what it does, is first generating a list of viable directory name, and let xargs call the second find with the names locating the file name within that directory
Try:
find -path '*/v0*/example.xls' -delete
This matches only files named example.xls which, somewhere in its path, has a parent directory name that starts with v0.
Note that since find offers -delete as an action, it is not necessary to invoke the external executable rm.
Example
Consider this directory structure:
$ find .
.
./a
./a/example.xls
./a/v0
./a/v0/b
./a/v0/b/example.xls
./a/v0/example.xls
We can identify files example.xls who have one of their parent directories named v0*:
$ find -path '*/v0*/example.xls'
./a/v0/b/example.xls
./a/v0/example.xls
To delete those files:
find -path '*/v0*/example.xls' -delete
Alternative: find only those files directly under directory v0*
find -regex '.*/v0[^/]*/example.xls'
Using the above directory structure, this approach returns one file:
$ find -regex '.*/v0[^/]*/example.xls'
./a/v0/example.xls
To delete such files:
find -regex '.*/v0[^/]*/example.xls' -delete
Compatibility
Although my tests were performed with GNU find, both -regex and -path are required by POSIX and also supported by OSX.
I have a large series of directories and subdirectories with many jpgs in them. I need to do two things:
Create a copy of each jpg found within it's own subdirectory
Rename this copied jpg such that apple.jpg becomes apple_m.jpg
I have tried to run the following commands in order:
//this creates a copy of every jpg found and appends '_m' to the end of it
find . -name '*.jpg' -execdir cp {} {}_m \;
//now again find everything with 'jpg_m' at the end and rename it as filename_m.jpg
find . -name '*.jpg_m' -execdir rename -v 's/\.jpg_m/_m\.jpg/' {} \;
However the 2nd command does'nt seem to work, can someone please explain what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks,
Adi
To rename files, you can simply use it this way
rename ".jpg_m" "_m.jpg" files_to_rename
so, if you want to copy and rename, you can rename it this way:
find . -name "*.jpg_m" -execdir rename ".jpg_m" "_m.jpg" {} \;
Why don't you do it in one pass?
find . -name '*.jpg' -exec cp {} m_{} \; -exec rename "m_" "" {} \;
I basically have written a shell script in AIX that will delete some old log file and will compress some .
This is my script
#!/bin/sh
###
### Static variables
###
nmon_dir="/var/log/applog/nmon"
cd $nmon_dir
find $nmon_dir -xdev -type f -mtime +360 -name "*.nmon*" -exec rm {} \;
find $nmon_dir -xdev -type f -mtime +300 -name "*.nmon" -exec gzip {} \;
I could delete the files as i wanted but that I am not sure whether it compressed those file . Because i couldn't find .gz file both in root or /var/log/applog/nmon path .
Need Help!
Seems to me like your KSH might be taking the {} you pass to find as a compound command definition instead of as the filename placeholder. Try escaping it, I use it as \{\} and it never gives me problems.
I have some folder hierarchy, in some of the folders there are images, I need a shell script which can list all images and copy them into one specified folder, where listing them is not important, I just want to copy all images into a folder?
I know I can
ls -R *.png
but how do I copy them all to one folder?
Thanks!
Update: As glenn jackman has pointed out, this would be slightly more efficient to use over the answer I provided:
file . -type f -name \*.png | xargs cp -t destination
For the explanation, see glenn's comments that follow this answer.
One way is to use find:
find . -type f -name "*.png" -exec cp {} ~/path/to/your/destination/folder \;
Explanation:
find is used to find files / directories
. start finding from the current working directory (alternatively, you can specify a path)
-type f: only consider files (as opposed to directories)
-name "*.png": only consider those with png extension
-exec: for each such result found, do something (see below)
cp {} ~/path/to/your/destination/folder \;: this is the do something part: copy each such result found (substituted into the {}) to the destination specified.
To copy multiple file patterns in single go we can use -regex instead -name
find . -type f -regex '.*\(jpg\|jpeg\|png\|gif\|mp4\|avi\|svg\|mp3\|vob\)' -exec cp {} /path/to/your/destination/folder \;