Question

6

cp recursive with specific file extension

rated 0 times [ 6] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3850 / 2 Years ago, tue, april 26, 2022, 6:09:59

I am trying to copy all .odt files including those in subdirectories.

cp -r ~/Documents/* ~/copies # works as expected

cp -r ~/Documents/*.odt ~/copies # does not work as expected

The first line will copy all files and in all subdirectories but the second will copy only the .odt files in ~/Documents and none of the files in the subdirectories.

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

luringdge

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 3

Total Questions: 126

Total Answers: 109

Location: India

Member since Sun, Feb 6, 2022

2 Years ago

luringdge questions

1 Accidentally rejected nvidia-cudnn license install with apt, now I can't uninstall it

Sun, Oct 17, 21, 08:22, 3 Years ago

1 Trying to uncomment unattended-upgrades lines with script, need help

Fri, Dec 30, 22, 23:57, 1 Year ago

1 enable AMDGPU for R9 270x on 20.04

Sun, Oct 10, 21, 07:21, 3 Years ago

1 How to fix "GLib-GIO-ERROR Settings schema 'org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser' is not installed"?

Sun, Apr 16, 23, 13:31, 1 Year ago

1 Ping and web requests have slow "startup" yet DNS, latency and speed tests are fast?

Tue, May 4, 21, 08:02, 3 Years ago

View All

answered 2 Years ago tisglitter · Accepted Answer

If you wish to replicate the directory structure (more like what cp -r does as suggested by steeldriver) but only populate it with the .odt files, you can do it with rsync, where -f is the 'filter' option. The other options are more straight-forward. You find all the options in man rsync.

rsync -nvr -f '+ *.odt' -f '+ **/' -f '- *' --prune-empty-dirs ~/Documents/ ~/copies/

It is a good idea to use the 'dry run' option -n and the verbose option -v in order to see what will be done before running the real command (when n is removed from the command line).