Unix copy specific files recursively

Recursive means that all the files in that folder, the files in the subfolders, and so on, will all be copied. Whenever '-r' is specified, the program always considers all files in the subfolders for copying. To achieve this, we use the find command , which is simply used to search for files and folders in Linux based on the parameters of the file or folder: filename, extension, size, etc.

We will make use of the find command to recursively locate files with a specific file extension and then pass this output to cp command to copy them. Finally, we have to pipe this output to the cp command. Thus, all the files of the extension '. In this article, we learned how to copy files with a specific extension recursively in Linux. Note that this method is useful if you are dealing with a smaller number of files.

Sean Sean Would you mind explaining me this part: -f 'hide,! Thanks in advance for your help! The -f means it is a filter rule short for --filter.

The rule says hide all non-directories, ie files. That was very useful, thks! Just to make sure I got it, you are filtering the command by saying to match everything that is not a directory, which means all the files. And the --include takes care of making sure that only.

A last question, what if I were interested in copying only the files in that directory, without copying the entire directory structure? Yes, match all files and hide them, except for. Not sure I understand your last question: do you mean flattening the tree structure? If so see: stackoverflow. Ryan It's not so clear to at least 44 upvoters.

Why is this not the correct answer to this question? Show 4 more comments. Smar 6, 2 2 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 46 46 bronze badges. Thanks for pointing out the --parents option. It does something slightly different to the posters requirement: It creates the directory structure as far as needed for the files to copy , not the whole directory structure.

If your find has an -exec switch, and cp an -t option: find. Thanks, glennjackman. Added a plusless solution. On a Solaris 8 box at work, the first find in my path is GNU find 4. Guess I shouldn't take a 10 year old program as gospel. Why I get message 'Omitting directory' when I try to copy them with your command? Can you explain why the braces have to be escaped here? Show 7 more comments. You could also use rsync for this. Dubu Dubu 3, 16 16 silver badges 26 26 bronze badges.

Also, the -R option can be added to copy the parent directory structure of source. You can use find and cpio in pass through mode find. I tried all the answers top down up to this one, and this was the only one that worked on the first attempt — OscarRyz. This should be the accepted answer.

I found the GNU docs helpful: "In copy-pass mode, [requested by the -p option, cpio] reads the list of files to copy from the standard input; the directory into which it will copy them is given as a non-option argument.

Community Bot 1. Kyle Strand Kyle Strand 7 7 silver badges 15 15 bronze badges. I got the same exact result when using the npm copyfiles script but if i use the find command it finds everything Randyaa I'll need some more details on which files, exactly, weren't found in order to help you.

You may find the discussion here and continued here about the precise behavior of the recursive glob useful. I've never run into this before but i corrected it with just an execution of shopt -s globstar immediately before my command and all is well. Thanks for the follow up! Best answer with most simple syntax. Works just fine and is easy to remember. In many cases find [things] xargs [do stuff] is very powerfull.

Very straightforward compared to some of the other answers. Breaks if you have spaces in filenames — Michele Piccolini. MichelePiccolini Spaces in filenames can be handled with find -print0 and xargs If not should the answer not simply be edited to include your suggestion. Show 1 more comment.