Copying files based on a condition

Question

Here's the problem I'm attempting to solve:

Let's say I have a directory "A", containing some files as well as some other directories.
I want to copy all the files directly under directory A to directory B.
I want to recursively copy all the folders inside folder A to folder C.

What is the shortest and less platform-specific way to accomplish this in UNIX/Linux?

Bernhard · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-04T19:16:25.120

6

Probably something like this

find A -type f -maxdepth 1 -exec cp {} B/ \;

And

find A -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec cp -r {} C/ \;

Where -type is a flag, determining the type you're looking for (file or directory), - maxdepth how deep into directory, and -exec for executing a command on the result.

edited Mar 04 '12 at 19:16

answered Mar 04 '12 at 08:15

Bernhard

12,272

1

What is the necessity for -name '*'? – enzotib Mar 04 '12 at 08:38
@enzotib Good point, I adjusted the answer. – Bernhard Mar 04 '12 at 08:52
Would use find ... \; for less platform specific. – forcefsck Mar 04 '12 at 09:09
Nice, but the second part also copies the entire A directory into C (in addition to the subdirectories). How would I remove that? – user2398029 Mar 04 '12 at 18:52
@louism The mindepth flag should prevent this. – Bernhard Mar 04 '12 at 19:17

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '12 at 08:53

2

You could use cp to copy the directories, giving a glob pattern ending in /,

cp -a A/*/ C/

and you can copy files without the -a (similar to -r) option

cp A/* B/

though this last command would give harmless errors on directories not been copied.

answered Mar 04 '12 at 08:53

enzotib

51,661

Would use -R instead of -a for less platform specific. – forcefsck Mar 04 '12 at 09:08

Copying files based on a condition

2 Answers2