Bash script to copy specific directories with pattern matching

Question

How can I copy directories from one location to another location that matches a pattern.

For example:

source = /media/src/
destination = /media/dest/

• The pattern is as /b/w{2}_/w{2}/b. i.e all directories like aa_bb, fg_sd, re_ya, AA_BB, aa_Bx, Ba_BB etc.

Answer 1

You can use pattern matching:

cp /media/src/[[:lower:]][[:lower:]]_[[:lower:]][[:lower:]] /media/dest/

The [[:lower:]] is a POSIX defined character class which matches all characters classified as lowercase letters.

Edit: To match all characters use the character class alpha instead of lower:

cp /media/src/[[:alpha:]][[:alpha:]]_[[:alpha:]][[:alpha:]] /media/dest/

Answer 2

Please check if this is what you wanted. It searches for directories with format xx_yy/ab_cd/&&_$$ (2char_2char) and copies the content to a new directory .

usage : ./script.sh

cat script.sh

#!/bin/bash

MYDIR="/media/src/"
NEWDIRPATH="/media/dest"
DIRS=`ls -l $MYDIR | grep "^d" | awk '{print $9}'`
for DIR in $DIRS
do
       total_characters=`echo $DIR | wc -m`
       if [ $total_characters -eq 6 ]; then
                has_underscore=`echo "$DIR" | grep "_"`
                if [ "$has_underscore" != "" ]; then
                        echo "${DIR}"
                        start_string_count=`echo $DIR | awk -F '_' '{print $1}' | wc -m`
                        end_string_count=`echo $DIR | awk -F '_' '{print $2}' | wc -m`
                        echo "start_string_count => $start_string_count ; end_string_count => $end_string_count"
                        if [ $start_string_count -eq 3 ] && [ $end_string_count -eq 3 ]; then

                                cp -r $DIR $NEWDIRPATH/
                        fi
                fi
        fi
done