script problem

[Hari Prasad S R]

Hi all,

I am doing some scripting, to copy some files source to destination.

I have about 25 files in current location, I want to copy all the files which starts from the letter a* ,out of which i don't want to copy a particular file which starts ae*

What I have written this

ls –al a* | grep –v ae | awk ‘{print $9}’

this is will give me the output, but i want to know how to copy all these files (i mean which comes as output of awk command)

[John Waller]

I personally would take a cheating way:

for a in `ls al a* | grep v ae | awk {print $9} `
do
cp $a /destination
done

Note the use of ` ` around your command.

[Muthukumar_5]

You can do as,

for file in `ls -al a* | grep -Ev 'ae|total' | awk '{ print $9 }'`
do
cp -i ${file}
done

Note: Negate grep for total string for using ls -l

hth.

[Muthukumar_5]

I am sorry no need to negate with total string. Simply as,

for file in `ls -al a* | awk '!/ae/{ print $9 }'`
do
cp -i ${file}
done

hth.

[Muthukumar_5 · Accepted solution]

ls -al a[!e]* | awk '{ print "cp "$9" /tmp" }' | ksh

It will copy all files to /tmp location. Change destination location accordingly.

hth.

[Hari Prasad S R]

Hi Muthukumar,

why we need ksh at the end, i am doing this bash

thanks

[RAC_1]

ls -al1 a[a-df-z]*

Will also do it.

[Orhan Biyiklioglu]

You should also use shell wildcards to filter the files you want instead of invoking three commands (ls,grep and awk)
Also this eliminates the need for a loop.


Just use

cp /sourcedir/a[!e]* /destdir/

for local or

scp /sourcedir/a[!e]* remote_host:/destdir/

for remote copying.

hth

[Hari Prasad S R]

thanks Orhan Biyiklioglu ,

it worked for me

[Muthukumar_5]

You can change ksh to bash to do that job.

ls -al a[!e]* | awk '{ print "cp "$9" /tmp" }' | bash

It will just work as a sub process to execute those copy operations.

ls -al a[!e]* | awk '{ print "cp "$9" /tmp" }'

will print the shell command that has to be executed. | bash will execute it.

hth.

[Hari Prasad S R]

thanks all for the reply

[Muthukumar_5]

Hi Hari Prasad,

Hope you got the solution.

I have a serious comment as,

I have assigned points to 1 of 63 responses to my questions. from your profile.

You assigned only one point to all these responses. Plz assign points to all responses so that you will get good responses.

Every one is sharing their valuable technical time with you PROMPTLY.

hth.