How to copy *.pdf from one mount to another

okorkie · 05-23-2010, 09:51 AM

Hi,

I am trying to copy a particular type of file from one mounted drive to another, but I am having difficulties.

I would like to copy all of my pdf files from my mounted drive to my USB drive.

I am currently in my /mnt/sda2 (sda2 is a Windows XP) directory and want to copy all of the *.pdf files to /mnt/sdf4 (sdf4 is a USB drive).

I have tried:

copy . *.pdf /mnt/sdf4 (this only copies a couple of files)
copy -R . *.pdf /mnt/sdf4 (this starts copying the directories instead of the files)

So I want to copy only the *.pdf files contained in the entire sda2 mount over to sdf4.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

serafean · 05-23-2010, 10:09 AM

hi, go to the directory you want to cpy from (cd command) and copy from there ;

Code:

cp -r *.pdf /mnt/sdf4/

You only need the -r option if you want to copy directories.
If you have the pdfs in multiple directories, then the find command ids appropriate :

Code:

find ./ -iname "*.pdf" -exec cp {} /mnt/sdf4/ ';'

what this does is that it looks through all your directories for any file ending in .pdf, and for each one it finds executes 'cp [pdf it found] /mnt/sdf4' for a more thorough understanding i suggest reading the find manpage.

Serafean

Simon Bridge · 05-23-2010, 10:12 AM

OK - the fact that these are two different physical drives has nothing to do with it.

The trick is to describe what you want to do in neutral terms - vis:
You want to hunt through all the subdirectories of /mnt/sda2 for files whose names contain the string ".pdf" (what about ".PDF"? - are there any portable document files which do not have the pdf suffix?) and copy them to the directory /mnt/sdf4 - is this correct?

At which point the "find" command springs to mind.

Something like:

Code:

find "/mnt/sda2" -name "*.pdf" -execdir cp {} /mnt/sdf4/;

... someone correct me

[edit] Hah! I was beaten to it ... the above is not case sensitive and avoids race conditions. See: man find.

okorkie · 05-23-2010, 10:47 AM

Correct... I want to hunt through all the subdirectories of /mnt/sda2 for files whose names contain the string ".pdf" and copy them to the directory /mnt/sdf4.

After I'm done with .pdf, I will move on to .doc and then .jpg, etc.

Thanks

okorkie · 05-23-2010, 11:09 AM

Hmmm... I'm using PuppyLinux and it doesn't like "-exec" or "-execdir" from both suggestions.

Robhogg · 05-23-2010, 02:21 PM

A little recursive function could do the job:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

DIR=${1:-`pwd`} # first command-line argument: source dir
TDIR=${2:-/mnt/sdf4} # second: target dir
SUFF=${3:-pdf} # third: file suffix

proc_dir () {
   cd $1

   for file in `ls`; do
      if [ -d $file ]; then
         proc_dir $file # if file is a directory, move into it
      elif echo $file | grep "\.$SUFF$" > /dev/null; then
         cp $file $TDIR # otherwise, if file has right suffix, copy it
      fi
   done
   cd ..
}

proc_dir $DIR

Simon Bridge · 05-23-2010, 02:34 PM

According to other questions about this, Puppy is fine with -exec as an option - try escaping the final character in that line:

find "/mnt/sda2" -name "*.pdf" -execdir cp {} /mnt/sdf4/ \;

what exactly is returned when you try to execute this?

@Robhogg: cool!

serafean · 05-24-2010, 05:14 AM

Hi, escaping should work, I simply put the ; into apostrophes ';' as follows

Code:

find "/mnt/sda2" -name "*.pdf" -execdir cp {} /mnt/sdf4/ ';'

My reasoning behind this is the following : bash uses the ; character as a delimiter between two commands on one line, thus you have to tell it that it has to treat it as a normal string to pass to the command; thats where escaping ( \; ) comes into play. the apostrophes just tell bash to treat it as a normal character (same as escaping)

okorkie · 05-24-2010, 05:04 PM

This worked:

find "/mnt/sda2" -name "*.pdf" -execdir cp {} /mnt/sdf4/ ';'

Thanks so much!

Now, Simon Bridge had asked whether I also wanted to do .PDF (in addition to .pdf). Is there anything special about doing uppercase .PDF??

Simon Bridge · 05-25-2010, 08:24 AM

Well done.

Some windows/dos apps use all upper-case suffixes by default. So you may have somepdf.PDF in the windows drive. If you used -iname option, you would not have got those. However, if you didn't want them then -iname is appropriate. As it stands - you got them.

Study the recursive program though. Learn how to write them