[K12OSN] OT: bash help - copying a series of files

[Garrett Novotny]

Rob,

Are you trying to do all the files in that specific directory?  If so you would use a wildcard (*) or like in your example *desktop to get any files ending in desktop

example: cp /usr/local/share/icons/*.desktop /destination/folder

If you are dealing with coping folders and files folders I think you need to use the -R (recursive) switch/option...

example: you have a 10 files and 5 folders inside the folders there are also a number of files to copy all of them you could use...

cp -R /locationOfFolderAndFiles/* /destination/

Hope this helps,
Garrett



--
Garrett Novotny
Technician - Technology Services
Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District
7106 South Avenue - Middleton, WI 53562
[email]  gnovotny at mcpasd.k12.wi.us 
[http] www.mcpasd.k12.wi.us
[voice]   608.829.9036 - Help Desk




>>> Nils Breunese <nils at breun.nl> 12/11/08 2:37 PM >>> 
Rob Owens wrote:

> j.w. thomas wrote:
>> Rob Owens wrote:
>>> I've read this somewhere before, but I'm having trouble finding it  
>>> on
>>> google...
>>>
>>> I need to copy a series of files without using a loop.  I think the
>>> syntax is something like:  cp /path/to/[file1 file2] /destination/ 
>>> folder
>>>
>>> But that doesn't work.  Does anybody know the correct syntax?   
>>> Google
>>> isn't so good at searching special characters like [ and {
>>
>> I do this:
>> cp /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2 /destination/folder
>>
>> If the names are as similar as you wrote though, you should be able  
>> to
>> do this:
>>
>> cp /path/to/file[12] /destination/folder
>>
> The names really aren't that similar.  Here's the actual paths that I
> need to copy:
>
> /usr/local/share/icons/Drawings.desktop
> /usr/local/share/icons/Obsolete\ Drawings.desktop
> /usr/local/share/icons/Obsolete\ a\ Drawing.desktop
>
> Since it's only 3 files, I could do as Robert suggests:
>
>> cp  /path/file1  /path/file2  /path/file3  /dest/dir
>
> But I was hoping to find a way with less typing, just in case  
> someday I
> have to do this with 10 files instead of 3.

You could first change the current working directory, so you don't  
need to supply the path to every file.

	cd /usr/local/share/icons
	cp Drawings.desktop Obsolete\ Drawings.desktop Obsolete\ a\  
Drawing.desktop /dest/dir

Nils Breunese.

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