[SOLVED] I need to copy all executable files in my home folder to my documents folder, how can I do this?
[SOLVED]
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find /home/$USER -maxdepth 1 -type f -executable -exec sh -c 'head -n 1 "$1" | grep -q "^#!/bin/bash" && cp "$1" /home/bob/Documents/Linux/Regularly_Copied_files_crontab' sh {} \;
edit: I just want to copy scripts in /home/$USER folder, not all the other subfolders.
edit 2: I think the better approach here would be to have two conditions.
The file is in /home/$USER/ and not in it's subfolders.
The file's first line should be #!/bin/bash
I don't actually need all executable files, I just want my bash scripts, but unfortunately, I don't have the good habit of giving the .sh extensions to all of them. These files are all executable, they all have a shebang line (`#!/bin/bash) as their first line, how can I copy them elsewhere? I mean, I know how the copy commands work, but I don't know if I can specify the pattern here.
How would I specify a cp command to only copy bash scripts to my docs folder?
Intended Use case: I am trying to create a command to copy all the bash scripts I have created in my home folder to my Documents folder. My docs folder is synced everyday, so I won't ever lose my scripts as they would be stored in the cloud.
Run it without exec -parameter to get a list of files affected, I'd guess that that will catch more than you want as it only checks that it's a normal file and has the excecutable -bit on. To get only bash-scripts you'd first need to get a list of files with find and then check if it's a script with something (grep or maybe file should work) and copy based on that result, but it shouldn't be too difficult to write a script for it.
One problem, I think it's copying all the files inside folder /home/$USER whereas I just want the bash files which are in /home/$USER exlcluding all the subfolders. The command grep -rl '#!/bin/bash' . | xargs -I {} cp {} /path/to/destination/ won't exclude subfolders.
assuming you have a GNU toolchain you can use the find command like so:
find . -type f -executable -exec sh -c '
case $( file "$1" ) in (*Bourne-Again*) exit 0; esac
exit 1' sh {} \; -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} cp {} target/
This first finds all executable files in the current directory (change the “.” arg in find to search other dirs), uses the file command to test if it’s a bash file, and if it is, pipes the file name to xargs which calls cp on each file.
note: if “target” is inside the search directory you’ll get output from cp that it skipped copying identical files. this is because find will find them a free you copy them so be careful!
note 2: this doesn’t preserve the directory structure of the files, so if your scripts are nested and might have duplicate names, you’ll get errors.