Beginner Question, Copy Command / Scripting?

[rscott5]

Hi all,

I'm very new to Linux and any scripting language (I do have a good programming background though), so please bare with me, here goes. I have a huge collection of music, all in different file formats, which I need to separate out in order to convert. The thing is that I want to maintain my file structure when I separate out the certain files to be converted. I have my music set up in a /Artist/Album/Number - Song Title format. Here is the code that I tried to use to accomplish my task:
cp /home/ryan/music/*/*/*.m4a /home/ryan/tobeconverted/*/*/*.m4a The problem here (I think) is that the cp command doesn't create the new .../*/*/ (.../Artist/Album/) directories when it needs to so when I run this it says directory does not exist. So my first question, is there a way to make the cp command do this for me?

If not, I suppose I will have to write a script to do this. The best way that I can think of to do this would be to loop through the folders, and if a *.m4a file is found, then it should create the appropriate directories (if needed) and then copy the file. Does this sound right? Any pointers as to how I would do this in Perl, or any other language?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Ryan

[WW]

There are probably many ways to do this. Here is one, but I expect someone else will come along any minute with an even clearer and more concise version.

You can use the rsync command with filters. For example, I created a directory called tmp1, that contains a few subdirectories and files:


~$ tree tmp1
tmp1
|-- a.dat
|-- b.www
|-- subdir1
| |-- d.dat
| `-- e.mmm
`-- subdir2
|-- f.dat
`-- subdir3
|-- junk.xyz
|-- x.dat
`-- y.dat

3 directories, 8 files
~$

To copy just the *.dat files, but keep the directory structure, I will use the rsync command like this:


~$ rsync -r --filter="+ */" --filter="+ *.dat" --filter="- *" tmp1/ tmp2
~$ tree tmp2
tmp2
|-- a.dat
|-- subdir1
| `-- d.dat
`-- subdir2
|-- f.dat
`-- subdir3
|-- x.dat
`-- y.dat

3 directories, 5 files
~$

Two notes:
1. The second filter option, --filter="+ *.dat", determines the extension of the files to copy.
2. The trailing / in tmp1/ is significant. Without it, there will be an extra directory level in tmp2.

[Mr. C.]

cd /home/ryan/music
find -name '*.m4a' | tar -cf - --files-from=- | tar -C /home/ryan/tobeconverted -xpf -


MrC

[rscott5]

MrC

Awesome! That worked perfect. Now I'm gonna get down to trying to understand why it worked so perfect. Thanks for the help.

WW - Thanks as well, Mr. C's answer just happened to seem quicker for me to try first.