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macosterminalcommandline

Move or copy the results of a find call in mac osx terminal

I have a large directory full of various shapefiles. I'd like to move or copy all of the files ending in _31. or _32. to a different directory (mac osx).

## Find all shapefiles ending in 31
find ./ -iname '*_31.*' 2>/dev/null

## Find all shapefiles ending in 32
find ./ -iname '*_32.*' 2>/dev/null

The above find calls successfully find all of the desired files. Now I'd like to move or copy those results to the new directory. Any ideas?

Solution

  • This is a job for xargs!

    find ./ -iname '*_32.*' | xargs -I _ cp _ destination

    xargs will take the output of find and run a command on each line.

    -I _ sets a place holder for the incoming line that is then used in the cp command.