UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a text list of about 3,000 file names (image files), which exist on a server and that I want to copy over to another location. I understand the Unix cp code, but what's the string to have it copy multiple files based on an external list?

Many thanks!

One gross solution could be (Not tested).

LIST=`cat mylist`
LOCATION=/some/location
for file in $LIST
do
cp $file $LOCATION
done

HTH,
enc.

You can also do

Code:

LIST=$(< mylist)
LOCATION=/some/location
cp $LIST $LOCATION

But for 3000 files, might run into a very long argument list which may make cp to fail.

location=/some/path
cat mylist | while read line
do
cp $line $location
done

Thanks for the suggestion! I set up a sample test and ran the sript from within the directory where my files that needed copying were, but it didn't work. Here's the output string:

usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 ... srcN directory

Any ideas as to what went wrong? Here's the command I used:

LIST=$(< manifest.txt)
LOCATION=/Desktop/test_received
cp $LIST $LOCATION

-- my files to be copied were in "test_move", to the location "test_received", using the list "manifest.txt". I ran it from within "test_move", but didn't know if I needed to articulate that or not.