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Accepted
Kong
Asked: 2019-11-02 07:25:03 +0800 CST

How to duplicate all folders into same directory?

  • 772

If I have thousands of folders named a/ b/ c/ etc, how can I duplicate them and their contents multiple times such that the copied folder would be given a different name eg a-copy1/ b-copy1/ c-copy1/ ... a-copy12/ b-copy12/ c-copy12/

16.04

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This script should make that possible:

    #! /usr/bin/env bash
set -e

for i in /path/to/folder
do
        if [ -d "$i" ]
        then
                for r in $(seq 1 5)
                do
                        cp -r "$i" "$i"\-copy"$r"
                done
        fi
done

    Information:

    • for r in $(seq 1 5): This allows you to pick the number of copies to create.
    • if [ -d "$i" ]: check if the target is a folder.
    • cp -r "$i" "$i"\-copy"$r": perform the copy.
    • set -e: stop on first error.

    Sample data:

    a b c d e f

    Sample output:

    a        a-copy3  b        b-copy3  c        c-copy3  d        d-copy3  e-copy2  e-copy5  f-copy2  f-copy5
a-copy1  a-copy4  b-copy1  b-copy4  c-copy1  c-copy4  d-copy1  d-copy4  e         e-copy3  f        f-copy3
a-copy2  a-copy5  b-copy2  b-copy5  c-copy2  c-copy5  d-copy2  d-copy5  e-copy1   e-copy4  f-copy1  f-copy4
    • 6

  2. If you have "thousands" of files and/or directories to process, find and xargs are the tools of choice. Read man find and man xargs. 

    find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -print0 |\
  xargs -0 --no-run-if-empty bash_script

    Where bash_script is a file (mode 755), in your $PATH containing a user-written script to do the copying.

    • 1

  3. Try in your directory:

    ls | grep "pattern" | xargs -i mkdir "{}-copy1"

    You will get all folders with the "pattern" get duplicate and rename with -copy1 at the end.

    • 1

  4. You may write a simple bash script like:

        for i in {1..10}; do
        for dir in $(find /src/dir -maxdepth 1 -type d); do
            cp -r $dir /dst/dir/$dir-copy$i;
        done
    done

    This snippet will make 10 copies of the directories located on /src/dir to /dst/dir

    • 0