Pipe grep to copy files based on name.

[Daffy]

I just finished restoring some files from a friend's hard disk. All files are now into a folder and I need to transfer some of them.

While it's easy to copy files with a certain extension, I cannot understand how I can copy them using the filenames.

To select files to copy based on the extension, I just use cp *.(extension) /destination/folder/.

To list items based in name, I used

ls | grep name\ to\ search

I think that it will be something like

cp | grep name\ to\ search

but where do I specify the destination folder?

How do I pipe grep to cp to transfer files based on name?

[jb_daefo]

find . -type f -name "some*.fil" -exec cp -iv {}  /destination/folder \;
# or less likely...
find . -type f -name "some*.fil" -print0 | xargs -J % cp -iv  /destination %

The second might fail if cp does not handle the incoming data with the addtion of a parameter, in other words it might be missing an item in the line to not fail.
disclaimer UNTESTED.

[ocicat]

While I agree that a solution using find(1) is much more elegant, you can also fall back to simple shell scripting to accomplish the same thing:

#!/bin/sh
for f in $(ls | grep foo) ; do
    echo "cp $f /dest"
done

• Place the above code into a text file & execute as an argument to sh(1) or make the file executable through chmod(1).
• Once satisfied that the output constructs the needed command, remove echo & the double-quotes.

[IdOp]

Something like

% cp *foo* /dest

works for me (unless it's going to overflow the command line). Replace the pattern *foo* as needed.

[Daffy]

Originally Posted by IdOp

Something like

% cp *foo* /dest

works for me (unless it's going to overflow the command line). Replace the pattern *foo* as needed.

Thank you! Well, that was easy.

@ocicat: I feel so stupid... It didn't even cross my mind to write a script.

[IdOp]

Daffy, glad it worked easily for you.

That said, each of the suggested approaches has its strong and weak points. If you're feeling inquisitive, some things to think about would be:

1) What happens in each approach if nothing matches the pattern?

2) What happens if a directory matches the pattern?

3) How many times is the cp command run, each way?

4) What other goodies can be gleaned from the man pages of your implementation of cp, find and your shell?