Find and Copy File Using Bash

find and copy file using Bash

I would recommend using find's -exec option:

find . -ctime 15 -exec cp {} ../otherfolder \;

As always, consult the manpage for best results.

Find and copy files

If your intent is to copy the found files into /home/shantanu/tosend, you have the order of the arguments to cp reversed:

find /home/shantanu/processed/ -name '*2011*.xml' -exec cp "{}" /home/shantanu/tosend  \;

Please, note: the find command use {} as placeholder for matched file.

How to move or copy files listed by 'find' command in unix?

Adding to Eric Jablow's answer, here is a possible solution (it worked for me - linux mint 14 /nadia)

find /path/to/search/ -type f -name "glob-to-find-files" | xargs cp -t /target/path/

You can refer to "How can I use xargs to copy files that have spaces and quotes in their names?" as well.

In bash, Find, Sort and Copy

Try deconstructing your pipeline to see what is happening.

find .  -type f -name '*.mov' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -dtl | head -20 | 

gives you a list of 20 newest mov files. The lost looks like:

-rw-r--r-- 1 ljm users 12449464 Jan 10 16:24 ./05ED-E769/DCIM/215___01/IMG_5902.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 ljm users 14153909 Jan 10 16:00 ./05ED-E769/DCIM/215___01/IMG_5901.mov
-rw-r--r-- 1 ljm users 13819624 Jan 10 15:58 ./05ED-E769/DCIM/215___01/IMG_5900.mov

So, your xargs|cp will get this as input.

It will be

cp -rw-r--r-- 1 ljm users 13819624 Jan 10 15:58 ./05ED-E769/DCIM/215___01/IMG_5900.mov /Volume/New_Directory/

If we look at your error message,

cp: illegal option -- w

cp -r is ok, cp -rw will produce this message. So that is consistent with what I said.

So, the question is why the -l in the copy. If you remove the long format, you get exactly what you need.

As a side note why ls -d, if your find ensures -type f?

find .  -type f -name '*.mov' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -t | head -20 | xargs -I{} cp {} /Volume/New_Directory/

should do what you want, but remember that you are parsing the output of ls, which is considered not a good idea.

Personally, I would

find . -type f -printf "%T@ %p\n" |
    sort -n |
    cut -d' ' -f 2- |
    tail -n 20 |
    xargs -I{} cp {} /Volume/New_Directory/

Bash script to find files in a list, copy them to dest, print files not found

Assuming that your list is separated by newlines; something like this should work

#!/bin/bash

dir=someWhere
dest=someWhereElse
toCopyList=filesomewhere
notCopied=filesomewhereElse

while read line; do
   find "$dir" -name "$line" -exec cp '{}' $dest \; -printf "%f\n"     
done < "$toCopyList" > cpList

#sed -i 's#'$dir'/##' cpList
# I used # instead of / in sed to not confuse sed with / in $dir
# Also, I assumed the string in $dir doesnot end with a /

cat cpList "$toCopyList" | sort | uniq -c | sed -nr '/^ +1/s/^ +1 +(.*)/\1/p' > "$notCopied"
# Will not work if you give wild cards in your "toCopyList"

Hope it helps

How to copy files found with grep

Try this:

find . -type f -exec grep -q '^beginString' {} \; -exec cp -t /home/user/DestinationFolder {} +

or

grep -lir '^beginString' . | xargs cp -t /home/user/DestinationFolder

But if you want to keep directory structure, you could:

grep -lir '^beginString' . | tar -T - -c | tar -xpC /home/user/DestinationFolder

or if like myself, you prefer to be sure about kind of file you store (only file, no symlinks), you could:

find . -type f -exec grep -l '^beginString' {} + | tar -T - -c |
    tar -xpC /home/user/DestinationFolder

and if your files names could countain spaces and/or special characters, use null terminated strings for passing grep -l output (arg -Z) to tar -T (arg --null -T):

grep -Zlir '^beginString' . | xargs --null cp -t /home/user/DestinationFolder

or

find . -type f -exec grep -lZ '^beginString' {} + | tar --null  -T - -c |
    tar -xpC /home/user/DestinationFolder

Copy files path from a specific directory onwards - Bash

If it's not possible to do cd first before find, try to do it in -exec:

find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec bash -c 'cd first; echo cp --parent "${1#./*/}" ../destination_folder/' _ {} \;

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