Copy multiple files from one directory to another from Linux shell

Question

I want to copy several files from one folder to another   How do I do it from the shell command prompt   Consider that folder1 contains ten files  e g  file1  file2  abc  xyz   etc     I am currently doing the following in order to copy two files from one folder to another   cp  home ankur folder file1  home ankur folder file2  home ankur dest   Typing the full path into the command line for both the files is annoying  What comes to my mind is regex  but I don t quite know how to do it   Any help will reduce my RSI  -

User · Answer

You can use brace expansion in bash   cp  home ankur folder  file1 abc xyz   path to target

User · Answer

Use wildcards   cp  home ankur folder    home ankur dest   If you don t want to copy all the files  you can use braces to select files   cp  home ankur folder  file 1 2  xyz abc   home ankur dest   This will copy file1  file2  xyz  and abc   You should read the sections of the bash man page on Brace Expansion and Pathname Expansion for all the ways you can simplify this   Another thing you can do is cd  home ankur folder  Then you can type just the filenames rather than the full pathnames  and you can use filename completion by typing Tab

User · Answer

I guess you are looking for brace expansion  cp  home ankur folder  file1 file2   home ankur dest  take a look here  it would be helpful for you if you want to handle multiple files once   http   www tldp org LDP abs html globbingref html tab completion with zsh

User · Answer

Try this simpler one   cp  home ankur folder file 1 2   home ankur dest   If you want to copy all the 10 files then run this command    cp   Desktop  xyz file 1 2  next files which are not similer  foo-bar

[linux] Copy multiple files from one directory to another from Linux shell

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