Shell Programming and Scripting

I have 1000 file in a directory.
I want to copy first 15 file,
after 5 minute copy next 15 file.
This sequence. Please help.

Thanks in advance

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
i=1
for file in `ls`
do
   cp $file $destination
   $i=$i+1
   mod=$(($i%15))
   if [ $mod -eq 0 ]
   then
        sleep 300
   fi
done

This code is messed up in several ways.

Why would you choose to run an ls command substitution with no options when you could simply use a * glob? The results of the command substitution will undergo field splitting which could lead to breakage. The glob will always be safe to use.

Since we know nothing about the pathnames in question, the parameters of the cp command need to be quoted. Again, to guard against field splitting.

I don't think $i++ is a valid korn shell statement.

i%15 will never -eq 15, so the sleep will never occur. i modulo 15 will range between 0 and 14. Also, i is up to 2 (if we assume that the increment worked) by the first time it's checked.

Perhaps the following will suffice:

Code:

counter=
for file in *; do
    cp "$file" "$destination"
    counter=x$counter
    if [ ${#counter} -eq 15 ]; then
        counter=
        sleep 300
    fi
done

Although depending on the contents of the directory and what exactly you're trying to do, you may need to test to confirm that $file is indeed a file (and not a directory, or a special file, etc).

Regards,
Alister

I can't see where $counter is incremented in this script.


Try this:

Code:

destination="/destination_dir"
counter=0
ls -1d * | while read filename
do
     # Ignore if not a file
     if [ ! -f "${filename}" ]
     then
           continue
     fi
     #
     counter=$(($counter + 1))
     if [ $counter -gt 15 ]
     then
            sleep 300
            counter=0
     fi
     cp -p "${filename}" "${destination}"
done

Footnote: For 1000 files there will be 66 sleeps of 5 mins. This adds up to 5h 30m of sleeps !

An "x" is added to $counter during each iteration. The "counter" is the string's length.

Regards,
Alister

@alister
Interesting. First time I've seen a counter implemented that way.

Thanks all for help