copy directories and files recursively using C shell or bash shell

bostonuser · 06-05-2008, 02:19 PM

Hi all,
I am trying to copy couple of directories and their files to another place. Each directory have 25-30 files and numbered accordingly, the problem I am facing is, I have to copy files numbered from 4-22 only and leave rest all.
I have written a code but its only copying one directory and its files and not others.
Overall /test1/step_1/prodinit_1....30 and I want to copy to /test2/step_1/prodinit_4...22

#!/bin/csh -f

set dir1 = /home/rr/copy/test1
set dir2 = /home/rr/copy/test2

set step = 1
set stepmax = 30
set num = 4
set nummax = 22

mkdir $dir2/step_${step}
echo $dir2/step_${step}

while ($step < 30)
cd $dir2/step_${step}
cp -r $dir1/step_${step}/prodinit_${num}*.* $dir2/step_${step}
echo "Copying file .."
@ num = ${num} + 1
if ($num == $nummax ) exit
cd ..
end

I am new to shell programming and any help will be appreciated.

Bostonuser

MS3FGX · 06-05-2008, 05:31 PM

Is this part of some assignment where you need to write a loop to do this?

I ask because you can copy ranges of files with normal Bash expressions, the command to copy prodinit_4 to prodinit_22 would be something like:

Code:

cp prodinit_[4-22]*

DotHQ · 06-05-2008, 05:52 PM

add a -r to the cp command to make it recursive.
cp -r prodinit_[4-22]* /path_to_target_dir/

Uxinn · 06-05-2008, 06:35 PM

lol so I guess this might be an overkill

or what... hmm tried your cp command and it does not work
only copies file 2 and 20-29?

ls -1 |grep -E '_[4-9]|_[1][0-9]|_[2][0-2]'

Code:

#!/bin/bash

dir1=~/sms/dir1
dir2=~/sms/dir2

for file in ` ls -1 $dir1|grep -E '_[4-9]|_[1][0-9]|_[2][0-2]'`; do
  cp  $dir1/$file $dir2
done

I'm a newbie scripter so i'm sure there is a better way to do this

bostonuser · 06-05-2008, 10:01 PM

Thanks to all of you for your time and suggestions.

In the mean time I wrote the program in Perl and it worked perfectly.
The only thing I was not able to do using shell scripting was to make directories recursively and then copy the content from source to destination. Any good tutorial for bash shell scripting??

Once again thanks to all.

Bostonuser

chrism01 · 06-05-2008, 11:31 PM

There's these:

http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

Enjoy

grizly · 06-06-2008, 01:21 AM

when you ran mkdir, use the -p switch

$mkdir -p /test/loc1/dir2/blah/foo/bar

it will fill in all the other directories recursively to make the path correct.

jschiwal · 06-06-2008, 01:24 AM

If you use the bash shell, and thanks to the names not using leading zero's, you can use brace expansion to select the files to copy:

cp dir1/files_{4..22} $dest/dir1/
cp dir2/files_{4..22} $dest/dir2/