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I want to delete oldest files in a directory when the number of files is greater than 5. I'm using
(ls -1t | tail -n 3)
to get the oldest 3 files in the directory. This works exactly as I want. Now I want to delete them in a single command with rm. As I'm running these commands on a Linux server, cd into the directory and deleting is not working so I need to use either find or ls with rm and delete the oldest 3 files. Please help out.
Thanks :)
If you want to delete files from some arbitrary directory, then pass the directory name into the ls command. The default is to use the current directory.
Then use $() parameter expansion to transfer the result of tail into rm like this
rm $(ls -1t dirname| tail -n 3)
rm $(ls -1t | tail -n 3) 2> /dev/null
ls may return No such file or directory error message, which may cause rm to run unnessesary with that value.
With the help of following answer: find - suppress "No such file or directory" errors and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/140647/198423
find $dirname -type d -exec ls -1t {} + | tail -n 3 | xargs rm -rf
For example, I want to copy the "file-to-be-copied.txt" from different directories
/home/user1/file-to-be-copied.txt
/home/user2/file-to-be-copied.txt
/home/user3/file-to-be-copied.txt
Then create a new directory based on the user account
/home/user4/user1/
/home/user4/user2/
/home/user4/user3/
Then copy the "file-to-be-copied.txt" to the new created directories
/home/user4/user1/file-to-be-copied.txt
/home/user4/user2/file-to-be-copied.txt
/home/user4/user3/file-to-be-copied.txt
All I know is that it should be done using bash scripting but I don't know how. This is as far as I go
find /home . "file-to-be-copied.txt" | xargs -i mkdir ... cp {} ...
No find necessary, and more so: no xargs (which is almost always superfluous with find, since find has -exec).
cd /home
cp --parents user?/file-to-be-copied.txt user4
for f in $(/usr/bin/find '/home' -name 'file-to-be-copied.txt'); do
tmpname=${f%/*}
dirname=${tmpname##*/}
/bin/mkdir -p $dirname && /bin/cp -p $f $dirname
done
This is the code I used.
for f in $(find '/home' -name 'file-to-be-copied.txt')
do
tmpname=${f%/*}
dirname=${tmpname##*/}
mkdir -p /home/user4/$dirname && /bin/cp -p $f /home/user4/$dirname
echo $f copied to /home/user4/$dirname
done
I have txt file with content like this
/home/username/Desktop/folder/folder3333/IMAGw488.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/folder3333/IMAG04f88.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/folder3333/IMAGe0488.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/folder3333/IMAG0r88.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/folder3333/
/home/username/Desktop/folder/
/home/username/Desktop/folder/IMAG0488.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/fff/fff/feqw/123.jpg
/home/username/Desktop/folder/fffa/asd.png
....
these are filenames paths but also paths of folders.
The problem I want to solve is to create all folders that doesn't exist.
I want to call mkdir command for every folder that does not exist
How can I do this on easy way ?
Thanks
This can be done in native bash syntax without any calls to external binaries:
while read line; do mkdir -p "${line%/*}"; done < infile
Or perhaps with a just a single call to mkdir if you have bash 4.x
mapfile -t arr < infile; mkdir -p "${arr[#]%/*}"
How about...
for p in $(xargs < somefile.txt);
do
mkdir -p $(dirname ${p})
done
xargs -n 1 dirname <somefile.txt | xargs mkdir -p
It can be done without loop also (provided input file not huge):
mkdir -p $(perl -pe 's#/(?!.*/).*$##' file.txt)
If you have file "file1" with filenames you could try this oneliner:
cat file1 |xargs -I {} dirname "{}"| sort -u | xargs -I{} mkdir -p "{}"
Use of:
xargs -I{} mkdir -p "{}"
ensures that even path names with spaces will be created
Using a perl one-liner and File::Path qw(make_path):
perl -MFile::Path=make_path -lne 'make_path $_' dirlist.txt
I want to create a clone of the structure of our multi-terabyte file server. I know that cp --parents can move a file and it's parent structure, but is there any way to copy the directory structure intact?
I want to copy to a linux system and our file server is CIFS mounted there.
You could do something like:
find . -type d > dirs.txt
to create the list of directories, then
xargs mkdir -p < dirs.txt
to create the directories on the destination.
cd /path/to/directories &&
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p -- /path/to/backup/{} \;
Here is a simple solution using rsync:
rsync -av -f"+ */" -f"- *" "$source" "$target"
one line
no problems with spaces
preserve permissions
I found this solution there
1 line solution:
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p /path/to/copy/directory/tree/{} \;
I dunno if you are looking for a solution on Linux. If so, you can try this:
$ mkdir destdir
$ cd sourcedir
$ find . -type d | cpio -pdvm destdir
This copy the directories and files attributes, but not the files data:
cp -R --attributes-only SOURCE DEST
Then you can delete the files attributes if you are not interested in them:
find DEST -type f -exec rm {} \;
This works:
find ./<SOURCE_DIR>/ -type d | sed 's/\.\/<SOURCE_DIR>//g' | xargs -I {} mkdir -p <DEST_DIR>"/{}"
Just replace SOURCE_DIR and DEST_DIR.
The following solution worked well for me in various environments:
sourceDir="some/directory"
targetDir="any/other/directory"
find "$sourceDir" -type d | sed -e "s?$sourceDir?$targetDir?" | xargs mkdir -p
This solves even the problem with whitespaces:
In the original/source dir:
find . -type d -exec echo "'{}'" \; > dirs2.txt
then recreate it in the newly created dir:
mkdir -p <../<SOURCEDIR>/dirs2.txt
Substitute target_dir and source_dir with the appropriate values:
cd target_dir && (cd source_dir; find . -type d ! -name .) | xargs -i mkdir -p "{}"
Tested on OSX+Ubuntu.
If you can get access from a Windows machine, you can use xcopy with /T and /E to copy just the folder structure (the /E includes empty folders)
http://ss64.com/nt/xcopy.html
[EDIT!]
This one uses rsync to recreate the directory structure but without the files.
http://psung.blogspot.com/2008/05/copying-directory-trees-with-rsync.html
Might actually be better :)
A python script from Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
posted on Copy only folders not files?:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os,sys
dirs=[ r for r,s,f in os.walk(".") if r != "."]
for i in dirs:
os.makedirs(os.path.join(sys.argv[1],i))
or from the shell:
python -c 'import os,sys;dirs=[ r for r,s,f in os.walk(".") if r != "."];[os.makedirs(os.path.join(sys.argv[1],i)) for i in dirs]' ~/new_destination
FYI:
Copy top level folder structure without copying files in linux
How do I copy a directory tree but not the files in Linux?
Another approach is use the tree which is pretty handy and navigating directory trees based on its strong options. There are options for directory only, exclude empty directories, exclude names with pattern, include only names with pattern, etc. Check out man tree
Advantage: you can edit or review the list, or if you do a lot of scripting and create a batch of empty directories frequently
Approach: create a list of directories using tree, use that list as an arguments input to mkdir
tree -dfi --noreport > some_dir_file.txt
-dfi lists only directories, prints full path for each name, makes tree not print the indentation lines,
--noreport Omits printing of the file and directory report at the end of the tree listing, just to make the output file not contain any fluff
Then go to the destination where you want the empty directories and execute
xargs mkdir < some_dir_file.txt
find source/ -type f | rsync -a --exclude-from - source/ target/
Copy dir only with associated permission and ownership
Simple way:
for i in `find . -type d`; do mkdir /home/exemplo/$i; done
cd oldlocation
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} mkdir -p newlocation/{}
You can also create top directories only:
cd oldlocation
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} mkdir -p newlocation/{}
Here is a solution in php that:
copies the directories (not recursively, only one level)
preserves permissions
unlike the rsync solution, is fast even with directories containing thousands of files as it does not even go into the folders
has no problems with spaces
should be easy to read and adjust
Create a file like syncDirs.php with this content:
<?php
foreach (new DirectoryIterator($argv[1]) as $f) {
if($f->isDot() || !$f->isDir()) continue;
mkdir($argv[2].'/'.$f->getFilename(), $f->getPerms());
chown($argv[2].'/'.$f->getFilename(), $f->getOwner());
chgrp($argv[2].'/'.$f->getFilename(), $f->getGroup());
}
Run it as user that has enough rights:
sudo php syncDirs.php /var/source /var/destination
Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command ?
I tried the following , which did not work:
cp file1 /foo/ /bar/
cp file1 {/foo/,/bar}
I know it's possible using a for loop, or find. But is it possible using the gnu cp command?
You can't do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs:
echo dir1 dir2 dir3 | xargs -n 1 cp file1
Will copy file1 to dir1, dir2, and dir3. xargs will call cp 3 times to do this, see the man page for xargs for details.
No, cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination. You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do; using, as you say, a loop or some other tool.
Wildcards also work with Roberts code
echo ./fs*/* | xargs -n 1 cp test
I would use cat and tee based on the answers I saw at https://superuser.com/questions/32630/parallel-file-copy-from-single-source-to-multiple-targets instead of cp.
For example:
cat inputfile | tee outfile1 outfile2 > /dev/null
As far as I can see it you can use the following:
ls | xargs -n 1 cp -i file.dat
The -i option of cp command means that you will be asked whether to overwrite a file in the current directory with the file.dat. Though it is not a completely automatic solution it worked out for me.
These answers all seem more complicated than the obvious:
for i in /foo /bar; do cp "$file1" "$i"; done
ls -db di*/subdir | xargs -n 1 cp File
-b in case there is a space in directory name otherwise it will be broken as a different item by xargs, had this problem with the echo version
Not using cp per se, but...
This came up for me in the context of copying lots of Gopro footage off of a (slow) SD card to three (slow) USB drives. I wanted to read the data only once, because it took forever. And I wanted it recursive.
$ tar cf - src | tee >( cd dest1 ; tar xf - ) >( cd dest2 ; tar xf - ) | ( cd dest3 ; tar xf - )
(And you can add more of those >() sections if you want more outputs.)
I haven't benchmarked that, but it's definitely a lot faster than cp-in-a-loop (or a bunch of parallel cp invocations).
If you want to do it without a forked command:
tee <inputfile file2 file3 file4 ... >/dev/null
To use copying with xargs to directories using wildcards on Mac OS, the only solution that worked for me with spaces in the directory name is:
find ./fs*/* -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 cp test
Where test is the file to copy
And ./fs*/* the directories to copy to
The problem is that xargs sees spaces as a new argument, the solutions to change the delimiter character using -d or -E is unfortunately not properly working on Mac OS.
Essentially equivalent to the xargs answer, but in case you want parallel execution:
parallel -q cp file1 ::: /foo/ /bar/
So, for example, to copy file1 into all subdirectories of current folder (including recursion):
parallel -q cp file1 ::: `find -mindepth 1 -type d`
N.B.: This probably only conveys any noticeable speed gains for very specific use cases, e.g. if each target directory is a distinct disk.
It is also functionally similar to the '-P' argument for xargs.
No - you cannot.
I've found on multiple occasions that I could use this functionality so I've made my own tool to do this for me.
http://github.com/ddavison/branch
pretty simple -
branch myfile dir1 dir2 dir3
ls -d */ | xargs -iA cp file.txt A
Suppose you want to copy fileName.txt to all sub-directories within present working directory.
Get all sub-directories names through ls and save them to some temporary file say, allFolders.txt
ls > allFolders.txt
Print the list and pass it to command xargs.
cat allFolders.txt | xargs -n 1 cp fileName.txt
Another way is to use cat and tee as follows:
cat <source file> | tee <destination file 1> | tee <destination file 2> [...] > <last destination file>
I think this would be pretty inefficient though, since the job would be split among several processes (one per destination) and the hard drive would be writing several files at once over different parts of the platter. However if you wanted to write a file out to several different drives, this method would probably be pretty efficient (as all copies could happen concurrently).
Using a bash script
DESTINATIONPATH[0]="xxx/yyy"
DESTINATIONPATH[1]="aaa/bbb"
..
DESTINATIONPATH[5]="MainLine/USER"
NumberOfDestinations=6
for (( i=0; i<NumberOfDestinations; i++))
do
cp SourcePath/fileName.ext ${DESTINATIONPATH[$i]}
done
exit
if you want to copy multiple folders to multiple folders one can do something like this:
echo dir1 dir2 dir3 | xargs -n 1 cp -r /path/toyourdir/{subdir1,subdir2,subdir3}
If all your target directories match a path expression — like they're all subdirectories of path/to — then just use find in combination with cp like this:
find ./path/to/* -type d -exec cp [file name] {} \;
That's it.
If you need to be specific on into which folders to copy the file you can combine find with one or more greps. For example to replace any occurences of favicon.ico in any subfolder you can use:
find . | grep favicon\.ico | xargs -n 1 cp -f /root/favicon.ico
This will copy to the immediate sub-directories, if you want to go deeper, adjust the -maxdepth parameter.
find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d| xargs -n 1 cp -i index.html
If you don't want to copy to all directories, hopefully you can filter the directories you are not interested in. Example copying to all folders starting with a
find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d| grep \/a |xargs -n 1 cp -i index.html
If copying to a arbitrary/disjoint set of directories you'll need Robert Gamble's suggestion.
I like to copy a file into multiple directories as such:
cp file1 /foo/; cp file1 /bar/; cp file1 /foo2/; cp file1 /bar2/
And copying a directory into other directories:
cp -r dir1/ /foo/; cp -r dir1/ /bar/; cp -r dir1/ /foo2/; cp -r dir1/ /bar2/
I know it's like issuing several commands, but it works well for me when I want to type 1 line and walk away for a while.
For example if you are in the parent directory of you destination folders you can do:
for i in $(ls); do cp sourcefile $i; done