Copy only certain file types from a folder structure to another

Question

I have a top folder with many sub-folders. It's named "a". There are many .png and .jpg files in there. I'd like to recursively copy "a" into a new folder "b", but only copy the .png and .jpg files. How do I achieve that?

rsync -a --include='*.png' --include='*.jpg' --include='*/' --exclude='*' a/ b/ If you want to prune empty dirs add the -m switch : rsync -am .... — don_crissti, Feb 21 '16 at 20:18
Please specify whether you want to recreate the directory structure (including only the jpg/png files) under b or you just want to recursively search for jpg/png under a and copy them to b ? — don_crissti, Feb 21 '16 at 21:02
If you want to copy the directory tree recursively, this is a duplicate of http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/2161/rsync-filter-copying-one-pattern-only . If you want to put all the files directly under b, I can't find a duplicate. Which is it? — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Feb 21 '16 at 21:50

gardenhead · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-21T21:06:02.397

8

find a \( -name "*.png" -or -name "*.jpg" \) -exec cp {} b \;

edited Feb 21 '16 at 21:06

answered Feb 21 '16 at 20:46

gardenhead

2,017

Whoops, I accidentally used *.png twice and forgot .jpg. This is what happens when I try to answer questions while listening to music. Thanks for catching my mistake. – gardenhead Feb 21 '16 at 20:56
OK, I think I got it this time. I learned something new about find today. Thanks. – gardenhead Feb 21 '16 at 21:06
One more thing: stick with -o instead of -or, it's more portable. – don_crissti Feb 21 '16 at 21:13
This is an excellent answer! – Jinhua Wang Oct 03 '19 at 13:47

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '16 at 18:48

4

One-liner

cp $(find a -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.png") b

answered Feb 21 '16 at 18:48

Marware

486
3
10

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 21 '16 at 18:35

2

for file in $(find a -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.png")
do
  cp ${file} b/${file}
done

edited Feb 21 '16 at 18:35

Jakuje

21,357

answered Feb 21 '16 at 17:43

MelBurslan

6,966

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 15 '19 at 13:53

A bit shorter if there are more file types, using brace expansion

cp -r source_directory/*.{png,jpg,jpeg} target_directory

This gives an error whenever a file of a type does not exist. see https://serverfault.com/a/153893
Add 2>/dev/null to hide these errors
Add || : to not cause an exit code

cp -r source_directory/*.{png,jpg,jpeg} target_directory 2>/dev/null || :

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 06 '22 at 21:29

0

You could use bash globstar with cp --parents:

shopt -s globstar
mkdir -p dest
cp --reflink=auto --parents **/*.jpg **/*.png dest/

answered Oct 06 '22 at 21:29

xiota

526

Copy only certain file types from a folder structure to another

5 Answers5