How do i make multiple copies of a file in the command line?
 

I want to make multiple copies of a file using the command line in one command.
Is there a way I can do it where the files will be named automatically without having to type file(1) file(2) file(3)?

This would cp file as file1 .. file10 if that's your goal, to add a number to each of the copies.

thanks but, isn't there a more regular variation of a command line tool?

What exactly are you looking for?

I've used tee to copy files. I just have to manually enter the file numbers myself.

me@me:~/Desktop$ cp wavotmp3.sh | tee wavotm31.sh wavotmp32.sh wavotmp33.sh

and I get:

cp: missing destination file operand after `wavotmp3.sh'
Try `cp --help' for more information.



The files show up but, I get that error. Does anyone know why?
I'm looking for something similar to similar to tee or cp so I don't stray to far from novice commands for now.

i see that wavotm31.sh wavotmp32.sh wavotmp33.sh have similarities in prefix. Why not*copy all files with prefix wavnot3 here. With cp you must have option and/or parameter, source then destination.

Thanks umarzuki but, that won't do it. I just want to be able to cp a file as many times as I want and have the comp number the copies for me.

kinda like saying: make me three copies of wavnot.sh Number them by yourself. I'm looking for something simpler than

for FILE in `seq 1 10`; do cp file file$FILE; done

Simple enough to create a script based on the above - pass file and count in as parms. Then it becomes as easy as something like "./copyit filename 10"

I don't think it's going to get any easier than that. If you're copying a file from one original file, they all need to be copied from that original. Define more simpler cause that's as basic as it's gonna get, using a for statement.

If you're looking for something like:

./somecommand <options>

Then like the previous poster said, throw what I've given you in a script that takes parameters afterwards of what you need or want.

;}

Ah man, you made it so it's one less character.

So why not this:

Now that's even shorter.. ;)

/me ducks and covers ....

But the point is that it doesn't invoke an
external command (seq).

Ah, when I said one less character, I wasn't counting the spaces but the two dots compared to my seq command. ;)

Thanks a lot folks.

I've only written one script before. So, this will be fun. But, I also don't even understand the code very well. In fact, I have no idea how I would write this script.

Could one of you give me more help on writing a script that would except number of copies as a variable. I can't even tell if "File" or "FILE" represent variables of the name of the file I want to copy.

The craziest part of this is that I'm trying to figure out how to do this just so I can make useless scripts and learn how to adjust their permissions proficiently.

In the snippet above FILE is a variable, and file is the
thing you want to copy all over the place. What it does
is to produce a sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, and
then copy file to file${FILE} (where ${FILE} is replaced
with the number from 1 to 10) for each iteration of the
for loop.