UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I've got a problem with the copy - command (reliant unix 5.43). It appears to me rather difficult to copy large amount of data. A command like "cp *.jpg" is simply refused. Does anybody know something about such a kind of restriction? Something like ... only 256 files could be copied at once. Perhaps it stays in relation with the file-system. It still appears strange to me ...

Thanks in advance!

sysadv

Hi sysadv,

This is a normal behaviour. The * gets resolved as arguments before the command is interpeted. So therefor (you'll probably have lots of jpg-files) the cp errors of; too many arguments.

Another remark is to not use the . This is something Windows alike. A dot in Unix has a different meaning, therefor I would suggest to try the following :

for i in `ls *jpg`
do
cp $i <dest-dir>
echo "Copy of $i was succesfull"
done

If this also does not work than do a man on "xargs"!! This can be your only solution then. I don't know the exact syntax, but man does

Regs David

Much thanks for your comment. I'll take a look in the man - pages ...

Bye sysadv