I have a bash script that is copying some files, but it doesn't seem to be working properly. A side note is that there are no matching files in the source directory. But the point of the script is to copy files if there are files to copy.
A basic snippet of what I'm trying to do:
source_loc=/u01
target_log=/u02
/usr/bin/cp "$source_loc"/dir/*file* "$target_loc"/dir/
Results in
Usage: cp [-fhipHILPU][-d|-e] [-r|-R] [-E{force|ignore|warn}] [--] src target
or: cp [-fhipHILPU] [-d|-e] [-r|-R] [-E{force|ignore|warn}] [--] src1 ... srcN directory
If I add set -x to my script, I get this...
+ /usr/bin/cp /u02/dir/
Usage: cp [-fhipHILPU][-d|-e] [-r|-R] [-E{force|ignore|warn}] [--] src target
or: cp [-fhipHILPU] [-d|-e] [-r|-R] [-E{force|ignore|warn}] [--] src1 ... srcN directory
+ set +x
The EXTRA peculiar thing about this is that if I re-run the script without changing anything, I get this as my output:
cp: /u01/dir/*file*: No such file or directory
Now I haven't tested this script with matching files in the source (I will be very shortly) but I want to make sure I'm not missing something. I don't care about getting an error, I just want to be sure I get the correct error (i.e. no such file or directory).
Any insight would be appreciated.
You can use find as suggested by #elliotfrisch:
find "$source_dir/dir" -type f -name "*file*" -maxdepth 1 -exec cp {} "$target_loc/dir" \;
Alternatively, in Bash, you can capture the glob results into an array and invoke cp when the array is not empty:
shop -s nullglob # glob expands to nothing if there are no matching files
files=("$source_loc/dir/"*file*)
((${#files[#]} > 0)) && cp "${files[#]}" "$target_loc"/dir/
Related
I have a bash script I'm trying to write
I have 2 base directories:
./tmp/serve/
./src/
I want to go through all the directories in ./tmp and copy the *.html files into the same folder path in ./src
i.e
if I have a html file in ./tmp/serve/app/components/help/ help.html -->
copy to ./src/app/components/help/ And recursively do this for all subdirectories in ./tmp/
NOTE: the folder structures should exist so just need to copy them only. If it doesn't then hopefully it could create the folder for me (not what I want) but with GIT I can track these folders to manually handle those loose html files.
I got as far as
echo $(find . -name "*.html")\n
But not sure how to actually extract the file path with pwd and do what I need to, maybe it's not a one liner and needs to be done with some vars.
something like
for i in `echo $(find /tmp/ -name "*.html")\n
do
cp -r $i /src/app/components/help/
done
going so far to create the directories would take some more time for me.
I'll try to do it on my own and see if I come up with something
but for argument sake if you do run pwd and get a response the pseudo code for that:
pwd
get response
if that directory does not exist in src create that directory
copy all the original directories contents into the new folder at /src/$newfolder
(possibly running two for loops, one to check the directory tree, and then one to go through each original directory, copying all the html files)
You process substitution to loop the output from your find command and create the destination directory(ies) and then copy the file(s):
#!/bin/bash
# accept first parameters to script as src_dir and dest values or
# simply use default values if no parameter(s) passed
src_dir=${1:-/tmp/serve}
dest=${2-src}
while read -r orig_path ; do
# To replace the first occurrence of a pattern with a given string,
# use ${parameter/pattern/string}
dest_path="${orig_path/tmp\/serve/${dest}}"
# Use dirname to remove the filename from the destination path
# and create the destination directory.
dest_dir=$(dirname "${dest_path}")
mkdir -p "${dest_dir}"
cp "${orig_path}" "${dest_path}"
done < <(find "${src_dir}" -name '*.html')
This script copy .html files from src directory to des directory (create the subdirectory if they do not exist)
Find the files, then remove the src directory name and copy them into the destination directory.
#!/bin/bash
for i in `echo $(find src/ -name "*.html")`
do
file=$(echo $i | sed 's/src\///g')
cp -r --parents $i des
done
Not sure if you must use bash constructs or not, but here is a GNU tar solution (if you use GNU tar), which IMHO is the best way to handle this situation because all the metadata for the files (permissions, etc.) are preserved:
find ./tmp/serve -name '*.html' -type f -print0 | tar --null -T - -c | tar -x -v -C ./src --strip-components=3
This finds all the .html files (-type f) in the ./tmp/serve directory and prints them nul-terminated (-print0), then sends these filenames via stdin to tar as nul-terminated literals (--null) for inclusion (-T -), creating (-c) an archive which is then sent to another tar instance which extracts (-x) the archive printing its contents along the way (optional: -v), changing directory to the destination (-C ./src) before commencing and stripping (--strip-components=3) the ./tmp/serve/ prefix from the files. (You could also cd ./tmp/serve beforehand, using find . instead, and change -C to ../../src.)
Hello i am trying to make a script which takes two arguments (names of directories) and copies the structure of the first into the other.
This is my code:
cd $1 && find . -type d -exec mkdir -p /$2/{} \;
when i run the script i dont get any errors but nothing happens. What am i doing wrong please help thank you.
edit: the script is saved in home and both directories are also in home (~). i run the script in terminal:
sudo bash DN1c.sh dir1 dir2
first directory has multiple subdirectories and the second directory is empty
export src=$1/. dest=$2
find "$src" -type d -exec bash -c 'printf "%s\0" "${#//"$src"/"$dest"}"' sh {} + | xargs -0 mkdir -p
You could use rsync to copy files and/or directories.
To copy directories only, set --max-size=0 and no files will be copied.
Example:
rsync -r -n -v --max-size=0 src_path/ dest_path
^ recursive
^ dry run - nothing copied
^ verbose
^ no files
^ src path
^ use a trailing / if you don't
want the src_path created
at dest
^ dest path
I'm trying to create a script that retrieves files (including subfolders) from CVS and stores them into a temporary directory /tmp/projectdir/ (OK), then removes copies of those files from my project directory /home/projectdir/ (not OK) without touching any other files in the project directory or the folder structure itself.
I've been attempting two methods, but I'm running into problems with both. Here's my script so far:
#!/usr/bin/bash
cd /tmp/
echo "removing /tmp/projectdir/"
rm -rf /tmp/projectdir
# CVS login goes here, code redacted
# export files to /tmp/projectdir/dir_1/file_1 etc
cvs export -kv -r $1 projectdir
# method 1
for file in /tmp/projectdir/*
do
# check for zero-length string
if [-n "$file"]; then
echo "removing $file"
rm /home/projectdir/"$file"
fi
done
# method 2
find /tmp/projectdir/ -exec rm -i /home/projectdir/{} \;
Neither method works as intended, because I need some way of stripping /tmp/projectdir/ from the filename (to be replaced with /home/projectdir/) and to prevent them from executing rm /home/projectdir/dir_1 (i.e. the directory and not a specific file), but I'm not sure how to achieve this.
(In case anybody is wondering, the zero-length string bit was an attempt to avoid rm'ing the directory, before I realised /tmp/projectdir/ would also be a part of the string)
You can use:
cd /tmp/projectdir/
find . -type f -exec rm -i /home/projectdir/{} \;
I have been given a list of folders which need to be found and copied to a new location.
I have basic knowledge of bash and have created a script to find and copy.
The basic command I am using is working, to a certain degree:
find ./ -iname "*searchString*" -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec cp -r {} /newPath/ \;
The problem I want to resolve is that each found folder contains the files that I want, but also contains subfolders which I do not want.
Is there any way to limit the recursion so that only the files at the root level of the found folder are copied: all subdirectories and files therein should be ignored.
Thanks in advance.
If you remove -R, cp doesn't copy directories:
cp *searchstring*/* /newpath
The command above copies dir1/file1 to /newpath/file1, but these commands copy it to /newpath/dir1/file1:
cp --parents *searchstring*/*(.) /newpath
for GNU cp and zsh
. is a qualifier for regular files in zsh
cp --parents dir1/file1 dir2 copies file1 to dir2/dir1 in GNU cp
t=/newpath;for d in *searchstring*/;do mkdir -p "$t/$d";cp "$d"* "$t/$d";done
find *searchstring*/ -type f -maxdepth 1 -exec rsync -R {} /newpath \;
-R (--relative) is like --parents in GNU cp
find . -ipath '*searchstring*/*' -type f -maxdepth 2 -exec ditto {} /newpath/{} \;
ditto is only available on OS X
ditto file dir/file creates dir if it doesn't exist
So ... you've been given a list of folders. Perhaps in a text file? You haven't provided an example, but you've said in comments that there will be no name collisions.
One option would be to use rsync, which is available as an add-on package for most versions of Unix and Linux. Rsync is basically an advanced copying tool -- you provide it with one or more sources, and a destination, and it makes sure things are synchronized. It knows how to copy things recursively, but it can't be told to limit its recursion to a particular depth, so the following will copy each item specified to your target, but it will do so recursively.
xargs -L 1 -J % rsync -vi -a % /path/to/target/ < sourcelist.txt
If sourcelist.txt contains a line with /foo/bar/slurm, then the slurm directory will be copied in its entiriety to /path/to/target/slurm/. But this would include directories contained within slurm.
This will work in pretty much any shell, not just bash. But it will fail if one of the lines in sourcelist.txt contains whitespace, or various special characters. So it's important to make sure that your sources (on the command line or in sourcelist.txt) are formatted correctly. Also, rsync has different behaviour if a source directory includes a trailing slash, and you should read the man page and decide which behaviour you want.
You can sanitize your input file fairly easily in sh, or bash. For example:
#!/bin/sh
# Avoid commented lines...
grep -v '^[[:space:]]*#' sourcelist.txt | while read line; do
# Remove any trailing slash, just in case
source=${line%%/}
# make sure source exist before we try to copy it
if [ -d "$source" ]; then
rsync -vi -a "$source" /path/to/target/
fi
done
But this still uses rsync's -a option, which copies things recursively.
I don't see a way to do this using rsync alone. Rsync has no -depth option, as find has. But I can see doing this in two passes -- once to copy all the directories, and once to copy the files from each directory.
So I'll make up an example, and assume further that folder names do not contain special characters like spaces or newlines. (This is important.)
First, let's do a single-pass copy of all the directories themselves, not recursing into them:
xargs -L 1 -J % rsync -vi -d % /path/to/target/ < sourcelist.txt
The -d option creates the directories that were specified in sourcelist.txt, if they exist.
Second, let's walk through the list of sources, copying each one:
# Basic sanity checking on input...
grep -v '^[[:space:]]*#' sourcelist.txt | while read line; do
if [ -d "$line" ]; then
# Strip trailing slashes, as before
source=${line%%/}
# Grab the directory name from the source path
target=${source##*/}
rsync -vi -a "$source/" "/path/to/target/$target/"
fi
done
Note the trailing slash after $source on the rsync line. This causes rsync to copy the contents of the directory, rather than the directory.
Does all this make sense? Does it match your requirements?
You can use find's ipath argument:
find . -maxdepth 2 -ipath './*searchString*/*' -type f -exec cp '{}' '/newPath/' ';'
Notice the path starts with ./ to match find's search directory, ends with /* in order to exclude files in the top level directory, and maxdepth is set to 2 to only recurse one level deep.
Edit:
Re-reading your comments, it seems like you want to preserve the directory you're copying from? E.g. when searching for foo*:
./foo1/* ---> copied to /newPath/foo1/* (not to /newPath/*)
./foo2/* ---> copied to /newPath/foo2/* (not to /newPath/*)
Also, the other requirement is to keep maxdepth at 1 for speed reasons.
(As pointed out in the comments, the following solution has security issues for specially crafted names)
Combining both, you could use this:
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -iname 'searchString' -exec sh -c "mkdir -p '/newPath/{}'; cp "{}/*" '/newPath/{}/' 2>/dev/null" ';'
Edit 2:
Why not ditch find altogether and use a pure bash solution:
for d in *searchString*/; do mkdir -p "/newPath/$d"; cp "$d"* "/newPath/$d"; done
Note the / at the end of the search string, causing only directories to be considered for matching.
Under unix, I want to copy all files with a certain extension (all excel files) from all subdirectories to another directory. I have the following command:
cp --parents `find -name \*.xls*` /target_directory/
The problems with this command are:
It copies the directory structure as well, and I only want the files (so all files should end up in /target_directory/)
It does not copy files with spaces in the filenames (which are quite a few)
Any solutions for these problems?
--parents is copying the directory structure, so you should get rid of that.
The way you've written this, the find executes, and the output is put onto the command line such that cp can't distinguish between the spaces separating the filenames, and the spaces within the filename. It's better to do something like
$ find . -name \*.xls -exec cp {} newDir \;
in which cp is executed for each filename that find finds, and passed the filename correctly. Here's more info on this technique.
Instead of all the above, you could use zsh and simply type
$ cp **/*.xls target_directory
zsh can expand wildcards to include subdirectories and makes this sort of thing very easy.
From all of the above, I came up with this version.
This version also works for me in the mac recovery terminal.
find ./ -name '*.xsl' -exec cp -prv '{}' '/path/to/targetDir/' ';'
It will look in the current directory and recursively in all of the sub directories for files with the xsl extension. It will copy them all to the target directory.
cp flags are:
p - preserve attributes of the file
r - recursive
v - verbose (shows you whats
being copied)
I had a similar problem. I solved it using:
find dir_name '*.mp3' -exec cp -vuni '{}' "../dest_dir" ";"
The '{}' and ";" executes the copy on each file.
I also had to do this myself. I did it via the --parents argument for cp:
find SOURCEPATH -name filename*.txt -exec cp --parents {} DESTPATH \;
In 2022 the zsh solution also works in Linux Bash:
cp **/*.extension /dest/dir
works as expected.
find [SOURCEPATH] -type f -name '[PATTERN]' |
while read P; do cp --parents "$P" [DEST]; done
you may remove the --parents but there is a risk of collision if multiple files bear the same name.
On macOS Ventura 13.1, on zsh, I saw the following error when there were too many files to copy, saw the following error:
zsh: argument list too long: cp
Had to use find command along with cp to get the files copied to my destination:
find ./module/*/src -name \*.java -print | while read filelocation; do cp $filelocation mydestinationlocation; done