FInd and copy multiple files that contain a pattern in Linux - linux

Question

When I need to copy multiple files in the same dir I can just:
cp file{20..30} newLocation
But when I combine that with find, it doesn't work.
find . -name 'file{20..30}' -exec cp '{}' newLocation ';'
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The {20..30} range syntax is a special feature of Bash's command-line parser. It is not part of standard POSIX globbing, such as find's -name test performs, and it's not even recognized by Bash in some contexts where you might like it to be.
You already know the simpler, more direct alternative that I would otherwise recommend for your example case. You could also do something like
find . '(' -name 'file2[0-9]' -o -name file30 ')' -exec cp '{}' newLocation ';'
, though that doesn't work very well if the endpoints of the range are determined dynamically.
If the point of using find is to avoid problems arising from some of the files not existing, then you might consider addressing it like this:
for f in file{20..30}; do
[[ -e "$f" ]] && cp "$f" newLocation
done

Answer 2

As mentioned from the other post/answer, enclosing the names with a ( and closing ) plus the -o and -name in between.
Something like this should be able to add those strings from your input file/string.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
format() {
local f
declare -ag files
for f; do
files+=( -o -name "$f" )
done
}
format file{10..20}
Now check the value of "${files[#]}"
declare -p files
Output
declare -a files=([0]="-o" [1]="-name" [2]="file10" [3]="-o" [4]="-name" [5]="file11" [6]="-o" [7]="-name" [8]="file12" [9]="-o" [10]="-name" [11]="file13" [12]="-o" [13]="-name" [14]="file14" [15]="-o" [16]="-name" [17]="file15" [18]="-o" [19]="-name" [20]="file16" [21]="-o" [22]="-name" [23]="file17" [24]="-o" [25]="-name" [26]="file18" [27]="-o" [28]="-name" [29]="file19" [30]="-o" [31]="-name" [32]="file20")
To see what would it look like when used as an input to find
printf '%s\n' "\( ${files[*]} \)"
Output
\( -o -name file10 -o -name file11 -o -name file12 -o -name file13 -o -name file14 -o -name file15 -o -name file16 -o -name file17 -o -name file18 -o -name file19 -o -name file20 \)
To use that array files as an input to find
find . -type f \( "${files[#]:1}" \) -exec bash -c 'echo cp -v -- "$#" /destination' _ {} +
The "${files[#]:1}" removes the leading -o
Remove the echo if you're satisfied with the output so files copying should occur.
Or just use globstar with nullglob'
#!/usr/bin/env bash
shopt -s globstar nullglob
cp -v ./**/file{10..20} /destination
The leading ./ means the current directory, It could be
/path/to/source/**/file{10..20}
where /path/to/source/ is the directory where the files in question are.