How copy and rename files found in "find" function Linux?

Question

I have a folder named /home/user/temps which has 487 folders.
In each folder I have a file called thumb.png.

I want to copy  all files named thumb.png to a separate folder and rename them based on the folder they came from.

simon · Accepted Answer

Here you go:

for file in /home/user/temps/*/thumb.png; do new_file=${file/temps/new_folder}; cp "$file" "${new_file//thumb/}"; done;

edit:

the canonical wisdom, by the way, is that using find for this is a bad idea -- simply using shell expansion is much more reliable.  Also, this assumes bash, but I figure that's a safe assumption :)

edit 2:

for clarity, I'll break it down:

# shell-expansion to loop specified files
for file in /home/user/temps/*/thumb.png; do

# replace 'temps' with 'new_folder' in the path
    # '/home/temps/abc/thumb.png' becomes '/home/new_folder/abc/thumb.png'
    new_file=${file/temps/new_folder};

# drop '/thumb' from the path
    # '/home/new_folder/abc/thumb.png' becomes '/home/new_folder/abc.png'
    cp "$file" "${new_file//thumb/}";
done;

details on the ${var/Pattern/Replacement} construct can be found here.

the quotes in the cp line are important to handle spaces and newlines etc. in filenames.

Noam Manos · Answer

You can find, copy, and rename files in oneliner command with -exec sh:
find /home/user/temps -name thumb.png 
-exec sh -c 'cp "{}" "$(basename "$(dirname "{}")")_$(basename "{}")"' ;

(The extra " are meant to deal with copying files with spaces).
Option 2 - with xargs (it can print each command before it is executed):
find /home/user/temps -name thumb.png 
| xargs -I {} --verbose sh -c 'cp "{}" "$(basename "$(dirname "{}")")_$(basename "{}")"'

sh -c cp "temps/thumb.png" "$(basename "$(dirname "temps/thumb.png")")_$(basename "temps/thumb.png")"
sh -c cp "temps/dir one/thumb.png" "$(basename "$(dirname "temps/dir one/thumb.png")")_$(basename "temps/dir one/thumb.png")"
sh -c cp "temps/dir two/thumb.png" "$(basename "$(dirname "temps/dir two/thumb.png")")_$(basename "temps/dir two/thumb.png")"

user unknown · Answer

Short helper code:

#!/bin/bash
#
# echo cp "$1" ../tmp/"${1////_}" 
#
mv "$1" ../tmp/"${1////_}"

let's name it 'deslash.sh' and make it executable. Call it with:

find -type f -name thumb.png -exec ./deslash.sh {} ";"

It will fail, if a collision exists

a/b/thumb.png # and 
a_b/thumb.png

but that's unavoidable.

lesmana · Answer

This works for arbitrarily deep subdirectories:

$ find temps/ -name "thumb.png" | while IFS= read -r NAME; do cp -v "$NAME" "separate/${NAME////_}"; done
`temps/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_thumb.png'
`temps/dir3/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir3_thumb.png'
`temps/dir3/dir31/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir3_dir31_thumb.png'
`temps/dir3/dir32/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir3_dir32_thumb.png'
`temps/dir1/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir1_thumb.png'
`temps/dir2/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir2_thumb.png'
`temps/dir2/dir21/thumb.png' -> `separate/temps_dir2_dir21_thumb.png'

The interessting part is the parameter expansion ${NAME////_}. It takes the content of NAME, and replaces every occurence of / with _.

Note: the result is dependent on the working directory and the path parameter for find. I executed the command from the parent directory of temps. Replace cp with echo to experiment.

shellter · Answer

Try this

mkdir /home/user/thumbs
targDir=/home/user/thumbs

cd /home/user/temps

find . -type d | 
 while IFS="" read -r dir ; do
   if [[ -f "${dir}"/thumb.png ]] ; then
     echo mv -i "${dir}/thumb.png" "${targDir}/${dir}_thumb.png"
   fi
done

Edit

I have added quoting in case any of your dir names have white-space chars embedded in them.

Also I have changed this so it will only print out the commands to be executed.
Examine the output of the script to be sure all files/path names look proper.
When you're sure there are no issues with the commands that will be executed, remove the echo.

elvenbyte · Answer

To copy you need the command cp, and to rename for linux is the same than moving the file, so you have to do it with mv command. In Linux you always have to specify the whole path, from the source, if you are in another folder, and to the destination folder, of course. I'd be something like this, for copy:

cp /source_path/file /destination_path/

or to rename or move

mv /source_path/old_file /destination_path/new_name_file

cp /source_path/file /destination_path/

or to rename or move

mv /source_path/old_file /destination_path/new_name_file

How copy and rename files found in "find" function Linux?

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