UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi guys

Let me start by saying that I'm a newbie, so feel free to point me to any good reading material. What I wanted to do is copy some specific files from windows to unix. Let me elaborate my view.

Let's say I have some directory tree in unix, CHO-species/C2H1O1/ VAS-S005-001-Ru444/OPT-0/, VAS-S005-002-Ru444/OPT-0/,
In my windows under Documents/Material Studio Projects/Pro-005/Documents/CHO-species/C2H1O1/ VAS-S005-001-Ru444 CASTEP Energy/, VAS-S005-002-Ru444 CASTEP Energy/ I have the same named .cell files, names are VAS-S005-001-Ru444.cell & VAS-S005-002-Ru444.cell. I wanted know if it's possible to write a script that'll match the directory between unix and windows and copy the .cell files into the respective unix directory? Normally what I do is open a file transfer window and transfer the .cell files manually in each directory. Is it possible for a loop to go through a unix directory upto child directory (here it's OPT-0) then copy the .cell file in there, come back all the way, then go through the directory again and copy .cell file again and thus goes on. Sorry if I made it complex but I hope I could make myself clearer :/ And I know it's not right just to state the problem but I searched and tried, you know I'm newbie :/ If anyone can shed some light on how to do this or point me to some link that'd be of great help.

Thanks a lot to all of you who're helping us in this forum to start learning about unix and solve our problems.

Saleheen

How do you transfer the files. Do you use (ssh/scp). If so, then it's easy to get what you want. The issue is not so much writing the script, the issue is what mechanism you use to transfer the files and how to automate the access mechanism. If the UNIX system has ssh installed on it then this is an easy exercise. You would just use scp to recursively copy (-r), see this link...

Code:

http://www.garron.me/en/linux/scp-linux-mac-command-windows-copy-files-over-ssh.html

Thanks a lot blackrageous. I do use scp to copy files from local linux machine to other servers but is it the same for my windows pc? I mean can I copy the same way? And how do I match the directory tree? Should I put unix directory tree in one variable and windows tree in another and through loop say if those two are equal do the scp? Thanks for the awesome link!

You can get scp for Windows, yes. I use pscp, published by the same people who created the PUTTY terminal program. It can be put in a batch file or run by other means.

You would do that on the Windows side.

Can you use busybox on your Windows machine? It provides, among other things, a Bourne shell. This problem sounds excruciating to try and do in a batch file... How would you even know the UNIX one? scp isn't a shell, it just copies files.

You are right! Directory tree will have different names :/ So you're saying to match the directory trees in windows?
Thanks a lot Corona688!

If that will work... Given \windows\path\to\CHO-species\C2H1O1\, can you strip off \windows\path\to to get the UNIX path?

If not, perhaps you could rename them to be identical to the UNIX path?

Otherwise, how is your program going to know what the UNIX path is? Unless you program in an exhaustive list...

Here's an idea. What if I copy the whole project from windows to unix using recursive scp and use a for loop and wild card to match the directory name in both,as you suggested the stripping of part in unix can be done using pwd, rev and awk? Is that possible? I don't wanna go through the list :/ Is it possible to create a for loop that'll make identical tree for both of them in unix?