Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community

Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Single line backups with find or cat and xargs, etc
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers Single line backups with find or cat and xargs, etc Post 303040140 by Chubler_XL on Wednesday 23rd of October 2019 11:44:34 PM
Old 10-24-2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by hwilliam777
So I am using find with a redirection operator to a plain text file. Now I want to say... cat that file and pipe it to xargs using the cp command to copy them all to a single directory so I can tar them into a tar ball... but I am screwing it up!!
Code:
mkdir NEW_PDF_DIR
cat MYPDF.txt | xargs cp NEW_PDF_DIR

You you don't say what OS you are using some GNU options can make this task easier. If cp implementations the cp -t DIRECTORY SOURCE ... method, then this makes xargs much easier to work with:

Code:
mkdir NEW_PDF_DIR
cat MYPDF.txt | xargs --no-run-if-empty cp -t NEW_PDF_DIR

Also GNU xargs allows a --no-run-if-empty which to avoids invoking cp if no files exist to be copied.

If NEW_PDF_DIR is under your home directory, you will want to prune it to avoid trying to backup the backup files!

Code:
find ~ -path ~/NEW_PDF_DIR -prune -type f -o -name "*.pdf" -print >> MYPDF.txt

 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

find | xargs cat

Hai I just want to find a file *.txt in particular direcotry and display the file name puls the content. Do someone know hot to do this, thanks. I try : find test/ -name '*.txt' | xargs cat but It does'nt print out the file name, i want something below print out in my screen : test/1.txt... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: asal_email
4 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

cat in the command line doesn't match cat in the script

Hello, So I sorted my file as I was supposed to: sort -n -r -k 2 -k 1 file1 | uniq > file2 and when I wrote > cat file2 in the command line, I got what I was expecting, but in the script itself ... sort -n -r -k 2 -k 1 averages | uniq > temp cat file2 It wrote a whole... (21 Replies)
Discussion started by: shira
21 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

find | xargs cat

Hi, I am having trouble getting a combination of commands to work. I need to traverse through all sub-directories of a certain directory and 'cat' the contents of a particular file in the sub-directories. The commands on their own work but when I combine them I get no output. The... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: DownunderDave
4 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find a pattern in a single line

Hi I have to find if a pattern is present in a line. eq line="dasdasd hello asdasdasd" Have to find if "hello" is present in the line or not. Which command to be used? Thanks (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: akashtcs
10 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Single/Multiple Line with Special characters - Find & Replace in Unix Script

Hi, I am creating a script to do a find and replace single/multiple lines in a file with any number of lines. I have written a logic in a script that reads a reference file say "findrep" and populates two variables $FIND and $REPLACE print $FIND gives Hi How r $u Rahul() Note:... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: r_sarnayak
0 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

XARGS and FIND together

I am trying to delete files older than 60 days from a folder: find /myfolder/*.dat -mtime +60 -exec rm {} \; ERROR - argument list too long: find I can't just give the folder name, as there are some files that I don't want to delete. So i need to give with the pattern (*.dat). I can... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: risshanth
3 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Help on cat filelist.txt |xargs -n1 find

I am trying to find all the files listed in a filelist.txt. Why cant I use something like this cat filelist.txt | xargs -n1 find $path (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: dragonpoint
2 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

find/xargs/*grep: find multi-line empty "try-catch" blocks - eg, missing ; not in a commented block

How can I recursively find all files in a directory and print out the file and first line number of any text blocks that match the below cases? This would seem to involve find, xargs, *grep, regex, etc. In summary, I want to find so-called empty "try-catch blocks" that do not contain code... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: lifechamp
0 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find 2 expressions then print in a single line

Guys, need help. I have a file that contains something like this: abc def ghi jkl I want to print the first and last line of the file and the output should be in a single line. so, output should be like this: abc jkl (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: solidhelix08
3 Replies

10. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

To find and display the middle line in a file using single line command.

Hi all, How can i display the middle line of a file using a single line command? (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: Lakme Pemmaiah
6 Replies

LEARN ABOUT BSD

xargs

XARGS(1)						      General Commands Manual							  XARGS(1)

NAME

       xargs - construct argument list(s) and execute utility

SYNOPSIS

       xargs [ -t ][[ -x ] -n number ][ -s size ][ utility [ arguments...  ]]

DESCRIPTION

       The  xargs utility reads space, tab, newline and end-of-file delimited arguments from the standard input and executes the specified utility
       with them as arguments.

       The utility and any arguments specified on the command line are given to the utility upon each invocation, followed by some number  of  the
       arguments read from standard input.  The utility is repeatedly executed until standard input is exhausted.

       Spaces,	tabs  and  newlines  may  be embedded in arguments using single (`` ' '') or double (``"'') quotes or backslashes (``'').  Single
       quotes escape all non-single quote characters, excluding newlines, up to the matching single quote.  Double quotes  escape  all	non-double
       quote characters, excluding newlines, up to the matching double quote.  Any single character, including newlines, may be escaped by a back-
       slash.

       The options are as follows:

       -n number Set the maximum number of arguments taken from standard input for each invocation of the utility.  An invocation of utility  will
		 use less than number standard input arguments if the number of bytes accumulated (see the s option) exceeds the specified size or
		 there are fewer than number arguments remaining for the last invocation of utility.  The current  default  value  for	number	is
		 5000.

       -s size	 Set  the  maximum number of bytes for the command line length provided to utility.  The sum of the length of the utility name and
		 the arguments passed to utility (including /dev/null terminators) will be less than or equal to this number.  The current default
		 value for size is ARG_MAX - 2048.

       -t	 Echo the command to be executed to standard error immediately before it is executed.

       -x	 Force	xargs  to  terminate  immediately if a command line containing number arguments will not fit in the specified (or default)
		 command line length.

       If no utility is specified, echo(1) is used.

       Undefined behavior may occur if utility reads from the standard input.

       The xargs utility exits immediately (without processing any further input) if a	command  line  cannot  be  assembled,  utility	cannot	be
       invoked, an invocation of the utility is terminated by a signal or an invocation of the utility exits with a value of 255.

       The xargs utility exits with a value of 0 if no error occurs.  If utility cannot be invoked, xargs exits with a value of 127.  If any other
       error occurs, xargs exits with a value of 1.

SEE ALSO

       echo(1), find(1)

STANDARDS

       The xargs utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2("POSIX") compliant.

								   June 6, 1993 							  XARGS(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:49 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy