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Operating on multiple specific folders at once with cp and rm commands

Time:10-05

I'm new to linux (using bash) and I wanted to ask about something that I do often while I work, I'll give two examples.

  1. Deleting multiple specific folders inside a certain directory.
  2. Copying multiple specific folders into a ceratin directory.

I succesfully done this with files, using find with some regex and then using -exec and -delete. But for folders I found it more problematic, because I had problem pipelining the list of folders I got to the cp/rm command succescfully, each time getting the "No such file or directory error".

Looking online I found the following command (in my case for copying all folders starting with a Z):

cp -r $(ls -A | grep "Z*") destination

But when I execute it it says nothing and the prompt won't show up again until I hit Ctrl C and nothing is copied.

How can I achieve what I'm looking for? For both cp and rm.

Thanks in advance!

CodePudding user response:

First of all, you are trying to grep "Z*" but it means you are looking for Z, ZZ, ZZZZ, ZZZZZ ? also try to execute ls -A - you will get multiple columns. I think need at least ls -1A to print result one per line. So for your command try something like:

cp -r $(ls -1A|grep "^p") destination

or

cp -r $(ls -1A|grep "^p") -t destination

But all the above is just to correct syntax of your example. It is much better to use find. Just in case try to put target directory in quotas like:

find <PATH_FROM> -type d -exec cp -r \"{}\" -t target \;
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