73
40
At the Linux command line, I'd like to copy a (very large) set of .txt
files from one directory (and its subdirectories) to another.
I need the directory structure to stay intact, and I need to ignore files except those ending in .txt
.
73
40
At the Linux command line, I'd like to copy a (very large) set of .txt
files from one directory (and its subdirectories) to another.
I need the directory structure to stay intact, and I need to ignore files except those ending in .txt
.
7
cd /source/path
find -type f -name \*.txt -exec install -D {} /dest/path/{} \;
1You're missing a .
after find
.
Also on macOS 10.13.1, this worked: find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec install -v {} /dest/path/{} \;
– grim – 2017-12-02T18:43:06.607
3
Another approach
find . -name '*.txt' -exec rsync -R {} path/to/dext \;
I like this solution. I used find . -iname '*.txt' -exec rsync -Rptgon {} path/to/dext \;
to do a case insensitive match and to preserver ownership and permissions. – MountainX – 2018-03-04T08:25:19.233
1
I was trying to do the same thing on macOS, but none of the options really worked for me. Until i discovered ditto
.
I had to copy many .wav files, and have it skip Video files... So here is what I came up with:
find . -type f -iname "*.wav" -ls -exec ditto {} /destination/folder/{} \;
find .
- Runs find in current folder. make sure you cd /source/folder
before you start
-type f
- Specifies to only look for files
-iname "*.wav"
- This tells it to look for case insensitive *.wav-ls
- This shows you the file that it is working on. Otherwase it shows nothing.-exec ditto {} /destination/folder/{} \;
- Does all the work of copying and creating the files with the same directory tree.1
how about you first copy it over with
cp -r /old/folder /new/folder
then go to the new folder and run
find . -type f ! -iname "*.txt" -delete
or just
cp -r /old/folder /new/folder && find . -type f ! -iname "*.txt" -delete
Edit: ok you want one command which filters (I have not tested this because my system doesn't have the cpio
command!). Here is where I found it: http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_mono/find.html#Copying-A-Subset-of-Files
find . -name "*.txt" -print0 |
cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir
Please test this first, because I haven't tried it yet. If someone would verify, that would be great.
You should keep the 0
in -pmd0
and add -print0
to the end of the find
command (just before the |
). – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' – 2014-09-11T21:51:42.667
why? (this is classic of the voodoo involved in *sh command line invocations) – jheriko – 2019-10-31T16:02:05.490
nods Cheers - this would work, but without filtering to .txt I'm looking at a few million files (coming out at a few hundred GB). If need be I may have to, but I'd love to filter while copying if possible – unclaimedbaggage – 2011-06-21T05:09:11.383
1Cheers, edited version works if I remove the '0' from -pmd0 – unclaimedbaggage – 2011-06-22T00:06:28.820
1
Easiest way that worked for me:
cp --parents -R jobs/**/*.xml ./backup/
one catch is you have to navigate to the "desired" directory before so the "parent path" is correct.
Also make sure that you enabled recursive globs in bash:
shopt -s globstar
0
Navigate to directory:
find . -regex '<regexp_to_get_directories_and_files_you_want>' | xargs -i cp -r --parents {} path/to/destination
It s a bit more straight forward and mighty, if you manage regular expressions.
-1
Navigate to directory:
cp '*.css' /path/to/destination
You'll have to navigate to each folder in the directory, but this is better than most of the options I've seen so far.
This method isn't recursive, meaning that for large directories you could be doing this for quite a while... – Iain Reid – 2017-02-16T16:33:31.437
2Having cp and find as tags in your question, does it mean that you're tied to these options? Since your dataset is very large, it makes sense to assume the copying process can get interrupted for some reasons and you'll have to restart it. I'm not sure the find/cp approach will be able to resume the transfer and copy only the missing part. If you aren't tied to find/cp, you could consider rsync, which is smarter. Its --exclude option will alow you to skip .txt files. – vtest – 2011-06-21T08:42:34.580
Fair call - rsync probably is the better option. Not tied to find/cp. (I used them anyway - rsync wasn't installed on the remote machine, it was a live web server & I wanted to leave as small of a footprint as possible) – unclaimedbaggage – 2011-06-22T00:08:17.757