How to copy multiple files from many directories to corresponding directories with different names?

Question

I have an apps folder. I need to copy all the .env.test files in each directory inside the apps folder to the corresponding .env file.

So for example if I have the following 2 directories insided the apps folder:

• client
• server

I need to copy

• apps/client/.env.test to apps/client/.env
• apps/server/.env.test to apps/server/.env

I can do that using a for loop like

for dir in apps/*/; do cp "${dir}.env.test" "${dir}.env"; done

But I was wondering if there's a simpler one-liner way maybe using find -exec cp or tee .

Answer 1

Using find:

find . -type f -iname '.env.test' | while read p; do cp "$p" "${p%\.test}"; done

This uses the bash % Parameter Expansion operator to remove the .test suffix from the path: "${p%\.test}"

How do I remove the file suffix and path portion from a path string in Bash?

---

Small local demo:

$ tree -a
.
└── apps
    ├── client
    │   └── .env.test
    └── server
        └── .env.test

4 directories, 2 files
$
$ find . -type f -iname '.env.test' | while read p; do cp "$p" "${p%\.test}"; done
$
$ tree -a
.
└── apps
    ├── client
    │   ├── .env
    │   └── .env.test
    └── server
        ├── .env
        └── .env.test

4 directories, 4 files
$