[Tfug] Need help with a complicated command line copy...

[Brian Zaugg]

Hi Jim,

Imagining that your friend's disk is mounted to /mnt/friend and you
are copying to /dest, something like this should work:

find /mnt/friend \(-name *.pdf -o -name *.xls -o -name *.doc\) -exec
cp \{\} /dest\ \;

The -exec syntax can be finicky depending on the platform, so this
might be easier:

find /mnt/friend \(-name *.pdf -o -name *.xls -o -name *.doc\) -print
| xargs -i cp '{}' /dest

Also, make sure and read the manpages for find and xargs first.

-Brian

On 6/27/07, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
> Guys,
>
> I have a complicated problem.
>
> I have a stack of old hard disks with data a friend wants extracted.
> There are a lot of duplicates, and of course they're scattered across
> multiple subdirectories.
>
> The file types are as you'd expect: .pdf, .doc, .xls, etc.
>
> At the DOS command line I'd have trouble with this: I could use XCOPY
> to move the files (based on extension) from disk to disk including
> subdirectories, but In this case I don't WANT the target-location
> files to be in subdirectories.  Instead, as I pile the files into the
> target location I want to keep them all in one, and as new ones try
> and come in retain the one with the latest datestamp.
>
> I'm using standard Ubuntu Feisty so I figure there has to be a way to
> skin this cat at the command line, probably with standard tools but,
> maybe with some add-in package?  Any tips would be welcome :).
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jim
>
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-- 
-Brian