Copy file in linux and rename

How to find,copy and rename files in linux?

I am trying to find all files in a directory and sub-directories and then copy them to a different directory. However some of them have the same name, so I need to copy the files over and then if there are two files have the same name, rename one of those files. So far I have managed to copy all found files with a unique name over using:

#!/bin/bash if [ ! -e $2 ] ; then mkdir $2 echo "Directory created" fi if [ ! -e $1 ] ; then echo "image source does not exists" fi find $1 -name IMG_****.JPG -exec cp <> $2 \; 

However, I now need some sort of if statement to figure out if a file has the same name as another file that has been copied.

One * matches all, you don’t need four of them. If you want to match exactly four characters, you can do . where each ? matches only one character. Also, you need to quote «IMG_. JPG» (like I did) to prevent shell from expanding it. You probably got lucky and there is no IMG_. JPG in the directory you are calling find from, so the pattern is kept intact.

Sure! I recommend reading this page: mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls it has good information where beginners (myself included) usually get wrong with bash.

4 Answers 4

Since you are on linux, you are probably using cp from coreutils. If that is the case, let it do the backup for you by using cp —backup=t

Try this approach: put the list of files in a variable and copy each file looking if the copy operation succeeds. If not, try a different name.

FILES=`find $1 -name IMG_****.JPG | xargs -r` for FILE in $FILES; do cp -n $FILE destination # Check return error of latest command (i.e. cp) # through the $? variable and, in case # choose a different name for the destination done 

Inside the for statement, you can also put some incremental integer to try different names incrementally (e.g., name_1, name_2 and so on, until the cp command succeeds).

You are right, -n is —no-clobber . I confused it with the flag from other commands. The answer is fine now.

Sorry, I should have mentioned in the question that I am only learning linux for the first time, so could you explain what the parts of your code do please? sorry.

for file in $1/**/IMG_*.jpg ; do target=$2/$(basename "$file") SUFF=0 while [[ -f "$target$SUFF" ]] ; do (( SUFF++ )) done cp "$file" "$target$SUFF" done 

in your script in place of the find command to append integer suffixes to identically-named files

You can use rsync with the following switches for more control

rsync —backup —backup-dir=DIR —suffix=SUFFIX -az

-b, —backup

With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the —backup-dir and —suffix options.

—backup-dir=DIR

In combination with the —backup option, this tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory on the receiving side. This can be used for incremental backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix using the —suffix option (otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory will keep their original filenames).

—suffix=SUFFIX

This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used with the —backup (-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if no —backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.

You can use rsycn to either sync two folders on local file system or on a remote file system. You can even do syncing over ssh connection.

rsync is amazingly powerful. See the man page for all the options.

Источник

Linux Copy File to Current Directory and Rename

Linux users have been using the mv and cp commands for several decades to rename and copy files. There are a few unique options for renaming a file, including simple techniques, variations, and other commands.

Linux Copy File to Current Directory and Rename

Linux Copy a file to Current Directory
An obvious way to do this is to use a command like “cp file1 file1-orig.”

By Using cp Command
The command is named cp from the short name of copy, which means copy. Linux system users can copy folders, directories, and files using the cp command. We can use cp commands along with destination and source only. Here along with the file’s path, the filename is also changed—the syntax for the cp command.

where,
cp > copy command
file1.txt > source file “file1.txt”
file2.txt > destination file “file2.txt”

Presence of file2.txt
If file2.txt is present, it is overwritten with the contents of file1. On the contrary, if file2.txt is not present, then it is created in that condition.

Overwriting the File
Using the following command, we can copy file1.txt to file2.txt:

Here, option -i is used to making it interactive and provide a prompt when file2.txt is overridden.

Linux copies an entire directory’s contents to another directory. In the command below, the wildcard * is used to copy one file between two locations.

Thus we have seen that to copy the content from one directory to another. The cp command is used for which the destination directory is mandatory.

In the absence of a destination directory, if we want to copy the content from the current directory, then we first create the destination directory and then copy the content. We use the below command to copy the content by creating the destination directory.

cp > copy command
-r > recursively
logs > source directory
logs2 > destination directory

Linux Copy multiple files to Current Directory

By Using cp Command
All we need is the cp command, plus the sources and destinations to copy multiple files and directories. Its syntax is something like this.

cp > copy command
file1.txt > source file file1.txt
file2.txt > source file file2.txt
logs1 > destination directory logs1

By Using tar Command
For copying a large number of files, the tar command is a better option. This strategy can get real old fast.

• We use the tar command to collect all the files we edit in the files we want to back up.
• Make backup copies easier by using a for a loop.

Tar is a great way to see the entire contents of an existing directory. In this, we use the following command.

We use the following command to identify a group of files with a pattern.

In each case, we see all files with the .txt extension or in the same directory end with the myfiles.tar file.

Easy loops allow us to create backup copies with modified names.

To copy the big-name file, we copy the files using the syntax of “-orig”.

Linux Rename File to Current Directory

The mv command is used to rename the file in the Linux system. For this, we need the current_name and new_name of the directory along with the mv command. We use the following syntax to rename the file.

To rename a file, we just used the mv command along with current_name and new_name.

Keep in mind that the new name we are giving to the file may not already exist. If this happens and we use the mv command, then the file gets overridden.

Rename and Copy at the same time

If we want to rename and copy at the same time, then we use the following command.

Conclusion

There are many options for renaming and copying files in the Linux system. This article saw how we copy files in directories and change their names through different commands. We hope you have understood well from this article how directories are copied and renamed in Linux using wildcards with commands.

About the author

Prateek Jangid

A passionate Linux user for personal and professional reasons, always exploring what is new in the world of Linux and sharing with my readers.

Источник

How to Copy File and Rename Linux

Sometimes you may need to copy files from one location to another while also renaming them. This can be useful for various reasons, such as creating a backup, duplicating a configuration file for editing, or generating a new version of a file with a different name. The easiest way to accomplish this task is by using the cp command in Linux.

It is fairly straightforward. By default, the cp command copies the file specified in the first argument to the location of the second argument. For instance, let’s copy the /etc/group file into your home directory and renaming it as group_back:

sudo cp /etc/group ~/group_back

In this case, the command includes sudo to grant administrative privileges. This may be necessary for some files, like the group configuration file in the /etc/ directory, which are protected and require elevated permissions for access or modification.

When executed, the command will copy the group configuration file from the /etc/ directory to your home folder, renaming it as group_back.

Found a mistake in the text? Let me know about that. Highlight the text with the mistake and press Ctrl+Enter.

Источник

Copy and Rename File In Linux

Linux is a file-based operating system and in daily operation, we use the copy and rename operations lots of times. There are different commands and methods to copy and rename files in Linux. The cp command is used to copy file and mv command is used to rename files. Actually only the cp command can be used to copy and rename a file if we want to copy a file and rename it because the copied files are also renamed automatically.

Copy and Rename Files with cp Command

The cp command is used to copy files but as we expect it also renames the copied files with the specified name. The source file is specified as the first parameter and the destination file with a new name is specified as the second parameter. In the following example, we copy and rename the file named db.txt into newdb.txt .

We can also copy and rename multiple files with a single command execution. In the following example, we copy and rename files users.txt, db.txt, groups.txt.

$ cp db.txt newdb.txt; cp users.txt newusers.txt; cp groups.txt newgroups.txt;

Rename File with mv Command

If we only need to rename a file we can use the mv command. The mv command is actually created to move files but it can be used to rename files which are very similar to moving files with new names. In the following example, we rename the file db.txt .

Copy and Rename Files with cp and rename Command

The rename command is created to rename files. We can use the cp and rename commands in order to copy and rename files. The cp can be used to copy single or multiple files. In the following example, we copy all files from the /home/db to the current working directory and rename them with the rename command by changing their names.

Copy and Rename Specific File Extensions

The rename command can be used to copy and rename files with specific extensions. In the following example, we rename all files with the *.txt extension into the *.t extension.

Источник