copying all files except those with certain extension

Linux and Unix-Like Linux
1

Hi,

I have a root directory which has a big number of other subdirectories and contains a big number of files. I want to copy all these files and directories to another folder except files with certain extension, say .txt, files - how may I do this?

Thanks,

faizlo

2

this will list all the files which don't have .txt extention...

then you can use cpio command to copy them...
go through the man page...

3

Thanks vidyadhar85,

But cpio is for archived files. I just want to copy all files and folders from source to destination, keeping the oder, without files with extension .exe, say. I do have some tar files in the source directory but I want to copy them as they are.

faizlo

4

cpio can copy as well, e.g.

find / \( ! -name "*.txt" \) -type f | cpio -vdump /path/to/destination
5

Thanks for this thread and for this forum. I loved it the first time I browsed it.
I tried Annihilannic reply and it worked like a charm. I tried to do this, but it did not work:

find /some/work/area/ \( ! -name "*.txt" \) -type f | scp user@www.domain.com:/home/user/some_folder

It did not work. I think I am missing an option or something, is there a solution for this situation?

eager

6

That doesn't work because scp does not accept a list of filenames from standard input.

To copy the files to another system it's better to convert the files into a stream format of some kind, such as a cpio or tar archive, pipe them through an ssh connection, and then extract them from the stream at the other end, e.g.

cd /some/work/area/ && find . \( ! -name "*.txt" \) -type f | cpio -o | ssh user@www.domain.com 'cd /home/user/some_folder && cpio -ivdm'

Note that I used cd to change into the respective directories so that the paths stored in the cpio archive are relative, not full paths.

7

Thank you man, it really worked like a charm!
I have another question for all you people here: How can one know all that about computers!?

eager

8

I had an error message with some files that said: truncating inode number, so I tried to add an option to cpio to be cpio -oc, the error disappeared.

eager

9

I've been playing with them for 23 years and I'm still learning. :o