I have this directory structure:
% ls /tmp/source_dir/
aa-aa/ bb-bb/ cc-cc/ morejunk/ somejunk/
% ls /tmp/dest_dir
aa-aa/ bb-bb/ blah/ blahblah/
For every directory in dest_dir matching ??-??, I want to copy a corresponding file "goodfile" from the source_dir. I have tried the following to no avail:
% cd /tmp/dest_dir
/tmp/dest_dir% \ls -d ??-?? | xargs cp /tmp/source_dir/{}/goodfile {}
cp: cannot stat `/tmp/source_dir/{}/goodfile': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `{}': No such file or directory
cp: omitting directory `aa-aa'
/tmp/dest_dir% \ls -d ??-?? | xargs bash -c "cp /tmp/source_dir/{$0}/goodfile {$0}"
cp: cannot stat `/tmp/source_dir/{/bin/bash}/goodfile': No such file or directory
Surely there's a way to do this without writing a separate script?
This xargs
should work:
cd /tmp/dest_dir
\ls -d ??-?? | xargs -I{} cp /tmp/source_dir/{}/goodfile {}