Mittwoch, 7. Dezember 2011

Copy files recursively without keeping directory structure (Linux)

We had to copy many files that were located in a very complex directory structure. The following snippet searches the current directory and its subdirectories for *.xml files & executes the cp command on every file it finds (the braces {} represent the file):

find -type f -iname '*.xml' -exec cp {} /target/dir/for/all/xmls/ \;

The target dir now contains all *.xml files without directories.

3 Kommentare:

  1. The correct command is : find -type f -iname '*.xml' -exec cp {} /target/dir/for/all/xmls/ \;
    No "-" before the "f" of the parameter type.

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  2. Hi igl,

    thank you very much for pointing that out. I corrected it in the example.

    Kind regards
    Marc

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  3. I'm all new to linux and it helps me learn these commands when I know the
    "full anatomy" of it, so to speak.

    I can see what each bit of it represents, except the last "\;", what does it mean?

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