Ubuntu – Operating on multiple files in a directory

bashcommand line

Suppose I want to copy (or for that matter, perform any operation on) two files, dir1/dir2/foo.abc and dir1/dir2/bar.xyz, to the current directory. What I end up doing is this:

cp dir1/dir2/bar.xyz dir1/dir2/foo.abc .

Is there a less cumbersome way to do the same? I mean something like:

cp dir1/dir2/["bar.xyz", "foo.abc"] .

Best Answer

Yes - in fact very like that - but with braces rather than square brackets:

$ cp -v dir1/dir2/{bar.xyz,foo.abc} ./
'dir1/dir2/bar.xyz' -> './bar.xyz'
'dir1/dir2/foo.abc' -> './foo.abc'

See brace expansion.

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Ubuntu – Terminal: Avoid repeating directory multiples times to reach files within

Use [1-2] to indicate the files, this uses bash's range expansion feature :

cp ~/Desktop/dir/dir/dir/dir/file[1-2].txt .

Here the range [1-2] will expand so file[1-2].txt will expand to file1.txt and file2.txt.

Note that if you have multiple files like this with various number of numeric digits among their names :

file1.txt file12.txt file980.txt file0.txt file23.txt

In this case use the extglob feature of bash to enable extended pattern matching:

$ shopt -s extglob

$ cp ~/Desktop/dir/dir/dir/dir/file+([0-9]).txt .

The extglob pattern +([0-9]) will match one or more digits between file and .txt in the file names.

Also note that it does not depend on any prefix or suffix, for example if you have files having names:

1 02 043 908

These can be matched (and copied) too by :

$ cp ~/Desktop/dir/dir/dir/dir/+([0-9]) .

Check man bash to get more idea on this.

Ubuntu – How to copy a directory without copying a specific file or subdirectory in terminal

In bash, you can use an extended glob to implement negation.

Given

$ tree main_dir
main_dir
├── dir1
│   ├── other file
│   └── somefile
├── dir2
│   ├── other file
│   └── somefile
├── dir3
│   ├── other file
│   └── somefile
└── file

3 directories, 7 files

then

shopt -s extglob
cp -r main_dir/!(dir2) main_dir_copy/

resulting in

$ tree main_dir_copy
main_dir_copy
├── dir1
│   ├── other file
│   └── somefile
├── dir3
│   ├── other file
│   └── somefile
└── file

2 directories, 5 files

Note that since this recursively copies the contents of main_dir (excluding the given dir2) rather than main_dir itself, the target directory main_dir_copy must already exist - if it doesn't, add mkdir main_dir_copy to the command sequence.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Terminal: Avoid repeating directory multiples times to reach files within

Ubuntu – How to copy a directory without copying a specific file or subdirectory in terminal

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