BASH SHELL , how to copy all file in dir1 to dir3 and show the output list :

These files from dir1 coppied to dir3
file1 file2 file123 a.bmp caza.jpeg




is it use the for loop ?

for file in `dir1`
do
cp $file dir3
echo $file
done

i don know how set the for loop to all the file in dir1 ?

You could simply use "cp -v dir1/* dir2/"
You don't need a loop.

but i have to show this output =(

These files from dir1 coppied to dir3
file1 file2 file123 a.bmp caza.jpeg

any idea?

sounds kinda like homework.

you don't have to use a for loop to copy files, you can simply use a file glob (i.e. dir/*)

so if you had some files that looked like so:


you could simply do this:

edit: oops... beat me to it.

i want show this output !

These files from dir1 coppied to dir3
file1 file2 file123 a.bmp caza.jpeg

the sample output must like above

OK, either use file globbing to produce a list of files for your for loop, or use sed or awk to convert the output of "cp -v dir1/* dir2/". Or use "find ./ -type f" to produce the list of arguments.

If you use a for loop, look at using "&&" to output the filename if the file was copied successfully.


This does sound like homework. Otherwise why does the output need to be like that. It is so contrived it is a stupid way of copying files. This is something you can do with a simple single command.

See the manpages or info pages for the "find", "cp" commands. For "for" loops, try "help for".
Also look in the info bash manual for information on variable substitution. You may need that to replace dir1 to dir2 in your copy command, depending on where the CWD is relative to your two directories.

edited.

jschiwal is really beating me to the punches today.

Sorry. I'll often spend too much time responding to a post and a mod will post a solution in the meantime.

can you explain more detail and with example ? i am not really understand.. thanks

If you use "cp dir1/* dir/", bash expands the asterisk to a list of files in the directory. You can have a for loop that uses dir1/* as arguments. It may work better if you cd into dir1 first. Then you won't have a dirname component.

Take a look at "set *" in the directory you are in. The set command will take the arguments and enter them into $1, $2, $3, etc. just as a command would see them. Look at $1, $2, and $@.
echo $1 $2 $3
echo $@

So bash expands the asterisk to a list of the filenames. You can use that list in a for loop.
echo "These files copied to dir1"
for file in *; do
cp "$file" dir2/ && echo "$file"
done

If you read through the info bash manual, look at the section on variable expansion. This will help if you need to do something like remove the directory part or you want to change part of the filename.
echo "These files copied from dir1 to dir2:"
for file in dir1/*; do
cp "$file" dir2/${file##*/}" && echo "${file##*/}"
done

If the filenames contain white space characters, then you may want to use "find" to produce a list of files instead of fileglobbing.
find dir1/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec cp -v '{}' dir2/ \;

The output can be filtered with a sed command like this to leave just the filename:
sed 's/`work\///;s/'"'"'.*$//'

The "work" is my DIR1. I was working interactively. For a script you may want to get DIR1 and DIR2 from arguments to your script and use that in your find and sed commands. Remember the a variable is expanded inside double quotes but not single quotes.

Good Luck. Be sure to try out these commands. I would also recommend you download the "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" from the www.tldp.org website. Don't let the title scare you. It is composed of well commented examples. Manpages usually don't have any or enough examples, and this book is composed entirely of examples.

Just stumbled across this; seems strange that no one has mentioned using either tar or cpio, to deep copy all files in a given dir, and its subdirs, e.g.:

(cd dir1; tar cf - *) | (cd dir2; tar xvf -)

Or even simpler

Yes, of course, it's a fair bet with GNU/Linux that cp will support the -R option, but other *nixes may not. The `tar' method is classical Unix sysadmin stuff, (at least from SVR3 days); just thought it odd that it wasn't mentioned.

I tend to use cp -pR dir1/* dir2/
as permissions tend to be important when I make a copy

Well we are on LinuxQuestions.org

Although I agree tar pipes are a clever use of a utility I think they are a bit too involved for this simple example.

Yes - I tend to use cp -a when wanting to preserve things but I take your point.

Just my two cents worth..