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linuxbashfindcp

How to copy all files from a directory and its subdirectories to another dir?

I have a /dir1, the structure is:

./aaa.txt
./bbb.jpg
./subdir1/cccc.doc
./subdir1/eeee.txt
./subdir2/dddd.xls
./subdir2/ffff.jpg

I want to copy all .txt and .jpg in /dir1 and its subdirectories to /dir2.

By using cp -r /dir1/* /dir2, it copies all files and its structure to /dir2.

By using cp -r /dir1/*.jpg /dir2 and cp -r /dir1/*.txt /dir2, it doesn't copy the .jpg and .txt files in the subdirectories.

By using

for FILE in `find`
do
  cp -f $FILE /dir1/
done

it can copy all files in dir and subdirectories to the destination, but I cannot filter the file type.

Is there another way that can achieve what I want?

Solution

  • You can use find to get the desired source files, and then use cp within the -exec predicate of find to copy the files to the desired destination. With GNU cp:

    find /dir1/ -type f \( -name '*.txt' -o -name '*.jpg' \) -exec cp -t /dir2/ {} +

    POSIX-ly:

    find /dir1/ -type f \( -name '*.txt' -o -name '*.jpg' \) -exec cp {} /dir2/ \;