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Old 07-20-2006, 09:42 AM   #1
ScottReed
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Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Montana
Distribution: Debian "squeeze"
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BASH script to copy specific files


I'm looking to copy only files of a specified type from a device to a specified location, also preserving the directory structure.

My usual course of action is:

Code:
cp -r -v /mnt/customer_hd /customer_backups/date_lastname
Which works fine 99.9% of the time because people want the entire drive backed up and archived. However, in this case we're looking at a drive that has almost 100gb of data on it, and she only wants the images.

So how would I go about writing a script to parse through the device and grab only the following:

.jpg
.JPG
.tif
.TIF
.bmp
.BMP
.psd
.PSD
.pdd
.PDD
.gif
.GIF

...and then copy them to my destination and preserve the structure?

Thanks,
Scott
 
Old 07-20-2006, 10:28 AM   #2
ioerror
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Registered: Sep 2005
Location: Old Blighty
Distribution: Slackware, NetBSD
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Off the top of my head:

Code:
cp $(find /src/dir -type f | grep -iE '\.(jpg|tif|bmp|psd|pdd|gif)$' /dest/dir
The only problem is that if there are a large number of files, you might hit the maximum command line length.

The obvious solution is extremely inefficient as it will spawn an instance of cp for each file:

Code:
find /src/dir | grep -iE ... -exec cp {} /dest/dir/$(basename {}) \;
Instead you could try

Code:
find /src/dir | grep -iE ... | perl -wpe 'END{print "/dest/dir"}' | xargs cp
which will append the /dest/dir to the file list. Without this, xargs is no use with cp.
 
Old 07-20-2006, 10:34 AM   #3
konsolebox
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Registered: Oct 2005
Distribution: Gentoo, Slackware, LFS
Posts: 2,248
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this script really took me some time so i hope it can help you

Code:
#!/bin/bash

EXTENSIONS="jpg JPG tif TIF bmp BMP psd PSD pdd PDD gif GIF"
SOURCEDIR=/mnt/customer_hd
TARGETDIR=/customer_backups/date_lastname

error() {
   echo "$@"
   exit 1
}

[ "$EXTENSIONS" ] || error "no extensions specified"
[ "${SOURCEDIR}" ] || error "source directory not specified"
[ -d "${SOURCEDIR}" ] || error "source directory not found"
[ "${TARGETDIR}" ] || error "target directory not specified"
[ ! -d $"{TARGETDIR}" ] && mkdir -p ${TARGETDIR}
[ ! -d "${TARGETDIR}" ] || error "target directory creation failed"

pushd "${SOURCEDIR}" || error "can't change directory to source directory"

IFS=$' '
cmd="find -type f | grep"
for a in ${EXTENSIONS}; do cmd="${cmd} -e \.${a}$"; done

IFS=$'\n'
#echo "${cmd}"
for a in $(eval "${cmd}"); do
	cp --parent -v "$a" "${TARGETDIR}"
done

IFS=$' \t\n'
popd
exit 0
sword bash! hehe
 
Old 07-20-2006, 10:51 AM   #4
ScottReed
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Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Montana
Distribution: Debian "squeeze"
Posts: 157

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thanks!

all ideas worked, thanks for the bash script code too.

slight code error in the script... see below:

Code:
[ ! -d $"{TARGETDIR}" ] && mkdir -p ${TARGETDIR}
should be...

Code:
[ ! -d "${TARGETDIR}" ] && mkdir -p ${TARGETDIR}
and...

Code:
[ ! -d "${TARGETDIR}" ] || error "target directory creation failed"
should be...

Code:
[ -d "${TARGETDIR}" ] || error "target directory creation failed"
Thanks again
Scott
 
Old 07-20-2006, 10:58 AM   #5
konsolebox
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Registered: Oct 2005
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yah no prob

next time you might as well turn it to a really easy script that can do this:
Code:
script.sh /sourcedir /targetdir exta extb extc bla bla
and knowing getopt can help you too. do man bash. it's an enough read.

just a suggestion. prefecting my scripts is what i do most
 
Old 07-20-2006, 11:08 AM   #6
ScottReed
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Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Montana
Distribution: Debian "squeeze"
Posts: 157

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 30
BASH scripting is a lot like NT Script. I have a vast knowledge of NT Script, but it's underneath layers of dust in my brain seeing that I haven't had a need to do it for the past 5 years since I left a job that required it.

Scott
 
  


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