Moving files listed in text file?

[Jay Colfer]

I've got a text file listing 1823 files that need to be copied from their current locations, i.e.

/media/blackhole/Audio/Music/whatever.mp3
/media/blackhole/Audio/Music/sowhat.mp3

To another folder, any idea how I should do this?

Thanks.

[sisco311]

while read file; do
  cp -vb "$file" /path/to/dir
done < /path/to/file

[Jay Colfer]

while read file; do
  cp -vb "$file" /path/to/dir
done < /path/to/file

I've got an idea how you mean for this to be used, but I'm kind of confused.

I'm thinking drop that code in a text file as move.sh, change /path/to/dir to the intended destination for all those files, and /path/to/file to the path to the text file full of files? i.e. foobar.txt?

so it'd look like

#hope I got this right
while read file; do
  cp -vb "$file" /home/jay/test
done < /home/jay/foobar.txt

and then run it from the terminal, how far off base am I?

Thanks for the help!

[sisco311]

I've got an idea how you mean for this to be used, but I'm kind of confused.

I'm thinking drop that code in a text file as move.sh, change /path/to/dir to the intended destination for all those files, and /path/to/file to the path to the text file full of files? i.e. foobar.txt?

Yep, you can create a scrip (move.sh) if you wish, but the code is very trivial an short you can type (copy/paste) it directly in the terminal. You can even write it in one line:

while read file; do cp -vb "$file" /home/jay/test; done < /home/jay/foobar.txt

Of course, if you plan to run it multiple times, then create a script:

#!/bin/bash
while read file; do
  cp -vb "$file" /home/jay/test
done < /home/jay/foobar.txt

Don't forget to make it executable:

chmod +x ./move.sh

[Jay Colfer]

Thanks, you're a life saver! I just moved all but a few of the files that had weird filenames that cp choked on, but that's easy enough to fix.