Skip to main content

Copy selected files in Linux


This command below will display files with time stamp of Nov 1.

 dir | grep "Nov 1"

Output of the command cannot be used as input of the cp or copy command.

Output of the command includes details such as file permissions, file owner, file size and other details.

Input parameters of cp or copy should only include specific filenames.

If the output of the dir and grep command will be used as input parameters or pipe to cp command.

An error message will be displayed like:
cp: invalid option -- 'w'

Try `cp --help' for more information.

Error message simply tells that cp command is not able to process input parameters.

To automate copying from the output of dir and grep, the output has to be redirected to a file.

Run the command below and redirect the output to a file.

  dir | grep "Nov 1" > myfile.txt

Filename extension doesn't matter in Linux but for readability purposes it’s good to include file names.

The output of the command will not be echoed to the screen but will be written on myfile.txt.

To automate copying, of the selected files a script is needed.

Script will do these steps below:

1. Read the file line by line.
2. Cut the line and just take the file name
3. Copy the file to the destination

Here's the bash script below to automate file copying of selected files:


===========================

#!/bin/bash

filename="myfile.txt"


while read line


do


    name=$line


    cutname=$line
    #echi "$name" will display the line on myfile.txt

    #echo "$name"


    fcutname=${cutname:45:12}    
    #echo "$fcutname" will display the concatenated string

    #echo "$fcutname"

   

    xpath="/home/mysql/logs/"

    #combine the path and the filename


    finalpath=$xpath$fcutname

    #echo "$finalpath"

   

    cp $finalpath "/home/backupUser/backupFolder/logsbackup"





done < "$filename"
===========================

In bash script, to cut the string.

Specify the first position to start string concatenation.

Then the second number tells bash it’s the number of characters that will be cut; starting from the first position.

    fcutname=${cutname:45:12}   

fcutname variable, first position at column 45 and cut up to 12 characters starting at column 45.

Like example below:
-rw------- 1 user fort     9185 Nov 1  2014 0000c22z.eml

Column 45 is before the first zero character in 0000c22z.eml.

12 is the length or the number of characters for 0000d22d.eml

Basically, it will just get or cut the file name as input for the copy command.

Remove the comment in the echo command to check how the cut string works in Linux bash.


That's it..Hope it helps to get started on how to automate task in Linux.

Linux Android App cheat sheet:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.LinuxMobileKit
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WMIC get computer name

WMIC get computer model, manufacturer, computer name and  username. WMIC is a command-line tool and that can generate information about computer model, its manufacturer, its username and other informations depending on the parameters provided. Why would you need a command line tool if there’s a GUI to check? If you have 20 or 100 computers, or even more. It’s quite a big task just checking the GUI to check the computer model and username. If you have remote computers, you need to delegate someone in the remote office or location to check. Or you can just write a batch file or script to automate the task. Here’s the code below on how get computer model, manufacturer and the username. Open an elevated command prompt and type:     wmic computersystem get "Model","Manufacturer", "Name", "UserName" Just copy and paste the code above, the word “computersystem” does not need to be change to a computer name. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Notepad++ convert multiple lines to a single line and vice versa

Notepad++ is an awesome text editing tool, it can accept regex to process the text data. If the data is in a “.csv” format or comma separated values which is basically just a text file that can either be opened using a text editor, excel or even word. Notepad++ can process the contents of the file using regex. Example if the data has multiple rows or lines, and what is needed is to convert the whole lines of data into a single line. Notepad++ can easily do it using regex. However, if the data is on a single line and it needs to be converted into multiple lines or rows then regex can also be used for this case. Here’s an example on how to convert multiple rows or lines into a single line. Example data: Multiple rows, just a sample data. Press Ctrl+H, and  on "Find what" type: [\r\n]+ and on "Replace with" type with: , (white space) --white space is needed if need to have a space in between the data. See image below, "Regular Expression" must be se
1 comment
Read more

Print error 016-799 - Fuji Film Xerox

016-799 Fuji Xerox or Fuji Film print error code. That shows a description error as “Print instruction Fail detected in decomposer.” The error code and error description are alien languages for users and even system administrators who are not familiar with Fuji Xerox error code. The error code is quite simple and easy to fix, if the job print goes to the printer but print out doesn’t come out. So, basically the print job was received by the printer, but the printer just doesn’t know what type of paper or what size to use or which tray to utilize for the print out. In some instances, this is just a paper mismatch but the error description; if using Windows 10 to print does not exactly points to what is the issue. First thing to check, is the paper size selected by the user to print. Example, if the printer configuration is A3 and A4 sizes only. But then the person printing the file accidentally chooses “A4 Cover” then this error 016-799 will occur.
6 comments
Read more