I am trying to get the second file, when file contents sorted in reverse (desc order) and copy it to my local directory using scp
Here's what I got:
scp -r uname#host:./backups/dir1/$(ls -r | head -2| tail -1) /tmp/data_sync/dir1/
I still seem to copy all the files when I run this script. What am I missing? TIA.
The $(...) is being interpreted locally. If you want the commands to run on the remote, you'll need to use ssh and have the remote side use scp to copy files to your local system.
Since parsing ls's output has a number of problems, I'll use find to accomplish the same thing as ls, telling it to use NUL between each filename rather than newline. sort sorts that list of filenames, and sed -n 2p prints the second element of the sorted list of filenames. xargs runs the scp command, inserting the filename as the first argument.
ssh uname#host "find ./backups/dir1/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name '[^.]*' -print0 | \
sort -r -z | sed -z -n 2p | \
xargs -0 -I {} scp {} yourlocalhost:/tmp/data_sync/dir1/"
If I got your question, your command is ok with just one specification:
you first ran scp -r which recursively scps your files which have theri content sorted in reverse order.
Try without -r:
scp uname#host:./backups/dir1/$(ls -r | head -2 | tail -1) /tmp/data_sync/dir1/
The basic syntax for scp is:
scp username#source:/location/to/file username#destination:/where/to/put
Don't forget that -rrecursively copy entire directories. More, note that scp follows symbolic links encountered in the tree traversal.
Related
I want to pass each output from a command as multiple argument to a second command, e.g.:
grep "pattern" input
returns:
file1
file2
file3
and I want to copy these outputs, e.g:
cp file1 file1.bac
cp file2 file2.bac
cp file3 file3.bac
How can I do that in one go? Something like:
grep "pattern" input | cp $1 $1.bac
You can use xargs:
grep 'pattern' input | xargs -I% cp "%" "%.bac"
You can use $() to interpolate the output of a command. So, you could use kill -9 $(grep -hP '^\d+$' $(ls -lad /dir/*/pid | grep -P '/dir/\d+/pid' | awk '{ print $9 }')) if you wanted to.
In addition to Chris Jester-Young good answer, I would say that xargs is also a good solution for these situations:
grep ... `ls -lad ... | awk '{ print $9 }'` | xargs kill -9
will make it. All together:
grep -hP '^\d+$' `ls -lad /dir/*/pid | grep -P '/dir/\d+/pid' | awk '{ print $9 }'` | xargs kill -9
For completeness, I'll also mention command substitution and explain why this is not recommended:
cp $(grep -l "pattern" input) directory/
(The backtick syntax cp `grep -l "pattern" input` directory/ is roughly equivalent, but it is obsolete and unwieldy; don't use that.)
This will fail if the output from grep produces a file name which contains whitespace or a shell metacharacter.
Of course, it's fine to use this if you know exactly which file names the grep can produce, and have verified that none of them are problematic. But for a production script, don't use this.
Anyway, for the OP's scenario, where you need to refer to each match individually and add an extension to it, the xargs or while read alternatives are superior anyway.
In the worst case (meaning problematic or unspecified file names), pass the matches to a subshell via xargs:
grep -l "pattern" input |
xargs -r sh -c 'for f; do cp "$f" "$f.bac"; done' _
... where obviously the script inside the for loop could be arbitrarily complex.
In the ideal case, the command you want to run is simple (or versatile) enough that you can simply pass it an arbitrarily long list of file names. For example, GNU cp has a -t option to facilitate this use of xargs (the -t option allows you to put the destination directory first on the command line, so you can put as many files as you like at the end of the command):
grep -l "pattern" input | xargs cp -t destdir
which will expand into
cp -t destdir file1 file2 file3 file4 ...
for as many matches as xargs can fit onto the command line of cp, repeated as many times as it takes to pass all the files to cp. (Unfortunately, this doesn't match the OP's scenario; if you need to rename every file while copying, you need to pass in just two arguments per cp invocation: the source file name and the destination file name to copy it to.)
So in other words, if you use the command substitution syntax and grep produces a really long list of matches, you risk bumping into ARG_MAX and "Argument list too long" errors; but xargs will specifically avoid this by instead copying only as many arguments as it can safely pass to cp at a time, and running cp multiple times if necessary instead.
The above will still work incorrectly if you have file names which contain newlines. Perhaps see also https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020
#!/bin/bash
for f in files; do
if grep -q PATTERN "$f"; then
echo cp -v "$f" "${f}.bac"
fi
done
files can be *.txt or *.text which basically means files ending in *.txt or *text or replace with something that you want/need, of course replace PATTERN with yours. Remove echo if you're satisfied with the output. For a recursive solution take a look at the bash shell option globstar
I am new to linux. I have a folder with many files in it and i need to get the latest file depending on the file name. Example: I have 3 files RAT_20190111.txt RAT_20190212.txt RAT_20190321.txt . I need a linux command to move the latest file here RAT20190321.txt to a specific directory.
If file pattern remains the same then you can try below command :
mv $(ls RAT*|sort -r|head -1) /path/to/directory/
As pointed out by #wwn, there is no need to use sort, Since the files are lexicographically sortable ls should do the job already of sorting them so the command will become :
mv $(ls RAT*|tail -1) /path/to/directory
The following command works.
ls | grep -v '/$' |sort | tail -n 1 | xargs -d '\n' -r mv -- /path/to/directory
The command first splits output of ls with newline. Then sorts it, takes the last file and then it moves this to the required directory.
Hope it helps.
Use the below command
cp ls |tail -n 1 /data...
I'm currently making a shell program and I want to display the total amount of bytes in a specific file using the pipe command. I know that the pipe command takes whatever is on the left side and gives it to the right as input. (Assuming you are in the directory the file is in)
I know that the command (wc -c) displays the number of bytes in a file but I'm not sure how to pipe it. What I've tried was:
ls fileName.sh | wc -c
wc takes the filename as argument, not as input. Try this:
wc -c fileName.sh
The wc program takes multiple arguments. You can do this to apply it to all entries in the current working directory:
wc -c $(ls)
Another approach is to use xargs to convert input to arguments:
ls | xargs wc -c
You may need to use a more complex line if you have spaces in your filenames. ls can output a single file per line, and xargs can be told to split only on \n:
ls -1 | xargs -d '\n' wc -c
If you prefer to use find instead of ls (a more powerful tool), the -print0 option for find plays along with the -0 option to xargs.
Here is what I am trying to achieve. I want to run a sequence of commands on that file, so for example
ls * | xargs (cat - | calculateforfile)
I want to run (cat | calculateforthisfile) on each of the file separately. So basically, how to group a list of commands as if it is one single function?
No need to use xargs. Just use a loop. You also don't need to use cat. Just redirect its input with the file.
for A in *; do
calculateforfile < "$A"
done
As a single line:
for A in *; do calculateforfile < "$A"; done
If you're looking for xargs solution for this (for example find command)
find . -name "*.txt" | xargs -I % cat %
This will cat all the files found under current directory that end in .txt
The -I option is the key there
I just thought I had found my solution because the command works in my test directory.
grep -H -e 'author="[^"].*' *.xml | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -I '{}' mv {} mydir/.
But using the command in the non-test-direcory the command did not work:
This is the error message:
grep: unknown option -- O
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try `grep --help' for more information.
Not even this worked:
$ grep -H author *.xml
or this:
$ grep -H 'author' *.xml
(same error message)
I suspect it has some relation to the file names or the amount of files.
I have almost 3000 files in the non-test-directory and only 20 in my test directory.
In both directories almost all file names contain spaces and " - ".
Some more info:
I'm using Cygwin.
I am not allowed to change the filenames
Try this (updated):
grep -HlZ 'author="[^"].*' -- *.xml | xargs -0 -I {} mv -- {} mydir/
EXPLANATION (updated)
In your "real" directory you have a file with name starting with -O.
Your shell expands the file list *.xml and grep takes your - starting filename as an option (not valid). Same thing happens with mv. As explained in the Common options section of info coreutils, you can use -- to delimit the option list. What comes after -- is considered as an operand, not an option.
Using the -l (lowercase L) option, grep outputs only the filename of matching files, so you don't need to use cut.
To correctly handle every strange filename, you have to use the pair -Z in grep and -0 in xargs.
No need to use -e because your pattern does not begin with -.
Hope this will help!