Copy group of files (Filename*) to backup (Filename*.bak)

Background

In Linux you can:

• List a group of files with ls Filename*
• Remove a group of files with rm Filename*
• Move a group of files with mv Filename* /New/Directory
• But you cannot copy a group of files with: cp Filename* *.bak

Change Linux cp command to copy group of files

I have a group of files I'd like to copy without entering the names one by one and using the cp command:

$ ls gmail-meta3*
gmail-meta3                          gmail-meta3-REC-1558392194-26467821
gmail-meta3-LAB-1558392194-26467821  gmail-meta3-YAD-1558392194-26467821

How can I use something like the old DOS command copy gmail-meta3* *.bak?

I don't want to type similar command four times:

cp gmail-meta3-LAB-1558392194-26467821 gmail-meta3-LAB-1558392194-26467821.bak

I'm looking for a script/function/app that accepts parameters for old and new filename group and not something with hard-coded filenames. For example, a user can type:

copy gmail-meta3* *.bak

or they might type:

copy gmail-meta3* save-*

Solution 1:

You can use find:

find . -max-depth 1 -name 'gmail-meta3*' -exec cp "{}" "{}.bak" \;

That will find in the current directory . all files with a name matching the glob pattern (mind the single quotes around the pattern to prevent shell globbing). For each file found, it will exec cp from name to name.bak. The \; at the end ensures it will do each file individually instead of passing all of them at once. The max depth as 1 only searches the cuurent directory instead of recursing down.

Solution 2:

Here is an example of one atypical usage of sed, that is applicable for this task:

sed -i.bak '' file-prefix*

In this way, actually, sed will not change the files, because we didn't provided any commands '', but due to the option -i[suffix] it will create a backup copy of each file. I found this approach when I was searching Is there any way to create backup copy of a file, without type its name twice?

Solution 3:

You can use a for loop with bash. Normally, I would just type it as a one-liner because this isn't a task I perform often:

for f in test* ; do cp -a "$f" "prefix-${f}.ext" ; done

However, if you need it as a script:

cps() {
   [ $# -lt 2 ] && echo "Usage: cps REGEXP FILES..." && return 1

   PATTERN="$1" ; shift

   for file in "$@" ; do
      file_dirname=`dirname "$file"`
      file_name=`basename "$file"`
      file_newname=`echo "$file_name" | sed "$PATTERN"`

      if [[ -f "$file" ]] && [[ ! -e "${file_dirname}/${file_newname}" ]] ; then
         cp -a "$file" "${file_dirname}/${file_newname}"
      else
         echo "Error: $file -> ${file_dirname}/${file_newname}"
      fi
   done
}

Usage is similar to rename. To test:

pushd /tmp
mkdir tmp2
touch tmp2/test{001..100}     # create test files
ls tmp2
cps 's@^@prefix-@ ; s@[email protected]@' tmp2/test*    # create backups
cps 's@[email protected]@' tmp2/test*    # more backups ... will display errors
ls tmp2
\rm -r tmp2                   # cleanup
popd

Solution 4:

The closest you will likely get to the DOS paradigm is mcp (from the mmv package):

mcp 'gmail-meta3*' 'gmail-meta3#1.bak'

If zsh is available, its contributed zmv module is perhaps a little closer:

autoload -U zmv

zmv -C '(gmail-meta3*)' '$1.bak'

I'd avoid ls regardless - a variant on your own answer that's safe for whitespace (including newlines) would be

printf '%s\0' gmail-meta3* | while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do cp -a -- "$f" "$f.bak"; done

or perhaps

printf '%s\0' gmail-meta3* | xargs -0 -I{} cp -a -- {} {}.bak