How to copy a file with unique name without navigating to directory

commandcpfile-copyfilenames

Let's say I have a file with a unique name (e.g.Screenshot20180509143013.png) that I wish to copy to /media/SD256.

The file /media/drive1/Users/name/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot20180509143013.png is tangled in some sub-directory levels, and I wish not to navigate to /media/drive1/Users/name/Pictures/Screenshots/ to find that file with the unique name.

Instead, I wish to run a command while my working directory is /media/drive1/, which looks similar to:

copy --find-filename-then-copy Screenshot20180509143*3.png /dev/media/SD256/DestinationFolder

Is there such a command that can first find the file and then copy?

Best Answer

Using find:

find . -type f -name Screenshot20180509143013.png -exec cp {} /dev/media/SD256/DestinationFolder ';'

This would find all regular files in or below the current directory, whose names are exactly Screenshot20180509143013.png. The found files would be copied to /dev/media/SD256/DestinationFolder. If there are multiple files with the same name (which you say there aren't), the files would overwrite each other in the destination directory.

Related Solutions

Find – How to Move or Copy All Files to a Directory with the Same Filename Prefix

It would be a hell to tell find what to do in this case.

Better use the shell:

for i in **/*.{xrt,ini,moo}; do
  FILE=$(basename "$i")
  DIR=~/dst/${FILE%.*}
  echo mkdir -p -- "$DIR"
  echo mv -i -t "$DIR" -- "$i"
done

Use shopt -s globstar to make the ** glob work (or use zsh!). And remove the echos later if the command prints what you want.

Take all the file structure but these directories

You can try with rsync or tar command .

See this or this post.

From rsync man page

    --exclude=PATTERN       exclude files matching PATTERN
    --exclude-from=FILE     read exclude patterns from FILE

rsync -avz --exclude 'dir*' source/ destination/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Find – How to Move or Copy All Files to a Directory with the Same Filename Prefix

Take all the file structure but these directories

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