bash script in OS X to copy all .wavs

Question

I've been attempting to copy all .wav files on my system (OS X based) into one folder .. strangely nothing is getting copied into the new folder.

#!/bin/sh

find . -name /Applications/*.wav -exec cp {} /Users/myhouse/Downloads/audio_pool/wav/ ;

is there a risk of getting a loop going (ie it finds files and continues to just copy them into the folder)

I also tried this format

for f in /*.wav; do cp "$f" /Users/myhouse/Downloads/audio_pool/wav/.; done                                                                              

Answer 1

The glob needs to be escaped to have find interpret it rather than the shell. Move the /Applications/ path to the front: -name is only matching the file name, not the full path. Make sure to quote the ; at the end, too.

find /Applications/ -name '*.wav' -exec cp {} /Users/myhouse/Downloads/audio_pool/wav/ ';'

     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^       ^^^^^^^                                                      ^^^
       directory        quoted glob                                                  quoted