trying to recursively copy jpegs

DJOtaku · 08-12-2005, 01:13 PM

I want to copy all of the jpgs in dir1 and all dir1 subdirectories into dir2.

The command I tried to use is

cp -r dir1/*.jpg dir2

However this only copies jpgs from dir1 into dir2 and doesn't go into dir1's subdirectories. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Matir · 08-12-2005, 01:29 PM

Use find and xargs to construct the copy.

Code:

find dir1 -name '*.jpg' -print0 | xargs -i cp "{}" dir2

DJOtaku · 08-12-2005, 02:23 PM

Thanks a lot! That was a line in a little bash script I was writing myself. I credited you in the release notes. Thanks again.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

############################################################
#
# By Eric Mesa
#
# My second base script
# This script licensed under GNU GPL v2 www.linux.org/gnu.html
#
# This script is for copying all of the jpegs in a directory
# to any other directory the user wishes.
#
# I wrote this because I have many folders which contain
# TIFFs, RAW, and JPEG files.  I just wanted to copy the
# JPEGs over - to make a CD or DVD, for example.
# Or to make a backup of the final product of editing
#
# The script will descend through all subdirectories
# from the initial directory given
#
# Version History
# 0.02 - 12 Aug 2005
# -thanks to David (aka Matir) on Linuxquestions.org
#  who helped me figure out how to recursively copy
#  only jpeg files
#
# 0.01 - 12 Aug 2005
# -Created the script
############################################################

#ask the user for the directory they with to copy from
echo "Enter the full path of the directory you wish to copy JPEGS from"

#read in the answer
read jpegdirectory

#Ask which directory to copy to
echo "Enter the directory to copy to"

#read in answer
read finaldirectory

###############################################################
# At this point in time I'm not good enough at bash scripting
# to actually tell the user if the directories don't exist
# or to ask them if this is correct or not, but this lays the
# groundwork.  In any case, it's always good to let the 
# user know what's about to happen, especially when
# copying files!
#
# However, an unexpected consequence of using Dave's
# find command will cause it to fail if it can't
# find the directory.  What I'd like to do in the
# next version is ask the user if this is correct and
# exit on a "n" or "no"
##############################################################

echo "About to copy JPEGs from " $jpegdirectory " to " $finaldirectory

###########################################################
# 
# For the following cp command I used the options
# i to keep you from accidentally overwriting files
# v to put the command in verbose mode (names all files)
# u to only try to overwrite the file if the jpegdirectory
#   has a newer file than finaldirectory
#
# Special thanks to David (aka Matir) on Linuxquestions.org
# For pointing me in the right direction.  Instead of just
# using a copy, we will use the find command and pipe
# that through xargs to copy - like so:
###########################################################

find $jpegdirectory -name "*.jpg" -print0 | xargs -i cp -rvu "{}" $finaldirectory

#the command that didn't work
#cp -irvu "$jpegdirectory"/*.jpg "$finaldirectory"

##########################################################
# Now let's let the user know that the process completed
# Yeah, I know it's against UNIX philosophy of nothing
# reported if the command completed ok, but it's not
# MY philosophy
#########################################################

echo "Copy Process Complete.  You should now only have jpegs copied over from " $jpegdirectory

DJOtaku · 08-12-2005, 02:27 PM

Ah, but one thing I just realized, directory structure on the other side is not preserved. Is there a way to incorporate that into the script?

Thanks!

DJOtaku · 08-12-2005, 02:35 PM

it looks like maybe I can combine

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=352079

with what you told me. I'll have to take a look and see if it's compatible.

Matir · 08-12-2005, 02:45 PM

Also, for cleanliness, (and I forgot this detail) xargs should also receive the -0 (that's the number 0) option. This just tells it only to split on nulls, which will help with any files that might have a space in the name.

As for the copying problem, check out the --parents option to cp.

And thanks for the credit in there.

If you ever copy files from, say, a digital camera, which has a habit of capitalizing names, you might want to use -iname instead of -name in find: it works in a case-insensitive manner.

DJOtaku · 08-26-2005, 08:00 AM

When I added the 0 to the xargs command I get the error -

cp: cannot stat '{}': No such file or directory

Code:

find $jpegdirectory -iname "*.jpg" -print0 | xargs -i0 cp --parents -rvu "{}" $finaldirectory

DJOtaku · 08-26-2005, 08:06 AM

Also, if I try the same line, but without the 0, parents doesn't seem to be giving me what I want. It copies all the parent directories of the jpg it finds. What I want it to do is find all the children directories of $jpegdirectory and preserver those.

DJOtaku · 08-26-2005, 08:35 AM

ok, the parents option seems to be the only way to do this, so I just need to get creative in which directory the program starts from, or something like that. I'm still thinking it through.

I am still getting the errors on xargs -i0 (a zero)

cp: cannot stat '{}': No such file or directory

DJOtaku · 08-26-2005, 09:47 AM

Ok, I'll post new code later, but it seems to be working just fine. Even without the 0 in the xargs it copies over names with spaces. Of course, I also took the 0 off of print.

Again, thanks for all your help, I intend to try this out over the next few weeks on my big project - copying thousands of jpegs from my windows computer over to my Linux external hdd.

Matir · 08-26-2005, 01:09 PM

the 0 should precede the -i, or xargs will think that '0' is an argument to -i. Try 'xargs -0 -i CMD'. If you want, of course.