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Amjith
Asked: 2012-03-17 03:09:49 +0800 CST

Copy a range of files in command line (ZSH/BASH)

  • 772

I have a list of files with consecutive numbers as suffixes. I would like to copy only a range of these files. How can I specify a range as part of my cp command.

$ls
P1080272.JPG* P1080273.JPG* P1080274.JPG* P1080275.JPG* P1080276.JPG* P1080277.JPG*
P1080278.JPG* P1080279.JPG* P1080280.JPG* P1080281.JPG* P1080282.JPG* P1080283.JPG*

I would like to copy files from P1080275.JPG to P1080283.JPG with something similar to:

$cp P10802[75-83].JPG ~/Images/.

Is there a way to do this?

linux bash copy zsh

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You were very close. Your question was almost the correct syntax:

    cp P10802{75..83}.JPG ~/Images
    • 30

  2. To iterate over a range in bash:

    for x in {0..10}; do echo $x; done

    Applying the same in your case:

    for x in {272..283}; do cp P1080$x.JPG ~/Images; done
    • 9

  3. Zsh, with the extendedglob option has the globbing (pattern matching) operator.

    setopt extendedglob
echo P10802<75-83>.JPG

    will match filenames in the current directory that match that pattern (beware that P1080275.JPG matches but so does P108020000000075.JPG)

    On the other end, the {x...y} string expansion operator (supported by zsh and recent versions of bash and ksh93), expands to the strings from x to y, regardless of what files there are in the current directory.

    cp P10802<75-83>.JPG ~there

    will copy the matching files, so will

    cp P10802{75..83}.JPG ~there

    But you'll get errors if for instance P1080281.JPG doesn't exist.

    • 4

  4. Would this work for you:

    for each in {75..83}; do cp P10802$each.JPG ~/Images/; done
    • 1