UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

If I run:

Code:

find /somefolder -type f -size -7M | wc -l

I get 73594 files

But when I run

Code:

find /somefolder -type f -size -7M -exec /bin/cp -v {} /someotherfolder/ \;

it only copies 38891 of the files to the folder, why? There's a mix of all types of files in /somefolder. Is there some other way I should be doing this?

Is it giving any error? Did you check the exit status of command after it is completed (echo $?)

there are no errors, I tried it with rsync using:

Code:

rsync -ruv --max-size=7M --progress /somefolder/* /someotherfolder

and that works, but I don't want to preserve the file structure in the destination folder.

I'd guess the 'cp' command may only accept up to a certain number of arguments, and the full list of files exceeds that number ... if I recall correctly (no guarantee) the -exec option causes the full list to be presented to the command it invokes ... though I'd expect it would provide an error message about too many arguments ... what OS & 'cp' version are you working with?

You may try following then:

Code:

cnt=1
find /somefolder -type f -size -7M | while read file; do
   echo "Copying $cnt: $file"
   cp $file /someotherfolder/
   cnt=$(expr $cnt + 1)
done

Maybe you have files in different subdirectories but with the same filename.
Try counting your unique names to test this theory.

Code:

find /somefolder -type f -size -7M -exec basename {} \; | sort | uniq | wc -l

I do hope that /someotherfolder is not a subdirectory of /somefolder .

NoWizz -> Debian Squeeze 64bit, cp (GNU coreutils) 8.5

anurag.singh -> doesn't copy filenames with spaces in filename, trying to figure out a workaround

methyl -> this outputted 38,xxx files, which is the reduced number it cp'ed previously, looking into duplicate filenames, not sure how to test this to confirm it's the problem. I ran it without piping to uniq and it returned 73,xxx files, so maybe that's my answer?