UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'll take my command apart pipeline by pipeline

find . -print
The finds all files in the current directory and any subdirectories. I add -print to ensure that the relative path is passed to the stdin of the next command, which is...

grep -v "^[.].*[.].*$"
This, as you say, gets rid of any files that have an extension

grep -v "^[.]$"
This removes "." - the current directory

\ is the line-continuation character

grep -v "$DEST"
This removes the destination directory from the input, no use trying to copy ./new to ./new/new is there?!

cpio -pdv $DEST
Copy in/out in pass through mode.

man cpio

All subfolders will be copied.
i.e.
/tmp/foo/some/folder/with/a/file
will be copied to
/tmp/foo/new/some/folder/with/a/file

Preserving the entire tree.

Cheers
ZB

find .
find / -> is clear....

print -> just don't understand anyway..

grep -> is clear..

\ -> line continue is clear..

cpio -> copy file archives in and out; duplicate directory trees
cpio -p dest -> copy pass modus from one to another directory
cpio -d -> create directories as needed (must the dirs not exist?)
cpio -v -> print a list of file names as they are processed

for example, I just wanna copy all files without any extension to one dir with the subfolders - all files are in different folders but the subfolders are like same named, f.e. pics:

VAR=/pics
DEST=/new
cd
find / -type f | grep "$VAR" | grep -v "^[.].*[.].*$" | \
cpio -pdv $DEST

now any files without an extension from any subfolder called pics should be transfered to the folder new, not!?

like....

new/users/123/pics/qweq
new/users/3241/qqqqw/pics/daqwwe
new/var/.images/pics/sadas

thx...

Yes, that should work. Test it and see - works for me.

Cheers
ZB

very nice ... but doesn't work perfectly.

grep -v "^[.].*[.].*$" didn't make it - so I've to go extension by enxtension, like

grep -v "\.TMP$"|\
grep -v "\.Z$" b2|\
grep -v "\.gz$"|\
....etc.

is there missing the backslash in "^[.].*[.].*$"?

by the way, I've got some files where I've got to rename them because of the ":" in its filename.

grep -v ":" works - but how to change ":" to "_" ?

I've read it in the forum, but don't find it anymore.

only sth. like append an extension.

for file in `cat file`
do
mv ${file} ${file}.tmp
done
..
is it possible to make it working for me and the ":" -> "_" prob?

thx again...

The grep works for me. Could it be because you are not using -print with find (which gives full path starting at the current directory ".")?

Grepping out specific extensions is probably easiest anyway, because of the fact that if you have a file called "myfile_version2.1", it will treat that as having an extension (.1).

To rename files, do something like this with "tr"

file="my:file"
newfile=`echo $file | tr ':' '_'`
mv $file $newfile

EDIT: Looking at your code, the reason it doesn't work it because your find starts at "/", not "." This is easy to remedy and something like
grep -v "^[^.]*[.].*$"
should do it.

Cheers
ZB

thx a lot...I've found the side https://www.unix.com/showthread.php?s...0&highlight=mv

there is an equal solution done by sed.

now I understand what you mean by using -print

"^[^.]*[.].*$" - looks a litte bit too strange for my experiences...

anyway I think now I can solve it on my own.