Find and copy files

Question

Why does the following does not copy the files to the destination folder?

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

cp: omitting directory `/home/shantanu/tosend'
cp: omitting directory `/home/shantanu/tosend'
cp: omitting directory `/home/shantanu/tosend'

Answer 1

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 uses {} as placeholder for the matched file.