find and copy files using input list and partial file paths

Question

I have a list of filenames names.list which contains names only. These files are scattered throughout my system in various sub folders but the structure is generally

uniquename/uniquename2/spades/filtered/filename

The constant is spades/filtered

I have used the following command when moving files from one directory

xargs -a file_list.txt cp -t /path/to/dest

And I spotted this thread on using wildcard/ partial file names

find . -path \*content/docs/file.xml

And I tried combining them like so

find . -path \*spades/filtered/ | xargs -a names.list cp -t $HOME/destination/

But I get the following error:

cp: cannot stat `filename': No such file or directory

tldr: I want to copy files using and input list of names only and partial file path

Answer 1

Go through the filenames via a for-loop and append them to the find pattern, copy with exec handle:

for i in $(<names.list)
do
    find . -path \*spades/filtered/"$i" -type f -exec cp -t "$HOME/destination/" {} \;;
done

Edit: Thanks to Rakesh Sharma`s answer, substituting the loop body with:

find . -mindepth 5 -maxdepth 5 -path "*/spades/filtered/$i" -type f -exec cp -t "$HOME/destination/" {} +;

speeds things up.

Answer 2

You could do away with the for loop and do everything within xargs:

xargs -a names.list -L 1 -I @ find . -path \*/spades/filtered/@ -type f -exec cp -fpvt "$HOME/destination/" {} +

Assuming GNU xargs, find, and cp utilities.

-a will read the filename a line at a time.

-L 1 option makes xargs pass one newline-separated argument to find.

-I @ option will condense that argument in the symbol @ which can be stuck in the utility invoked by xargs, in this case, find. More specifically, the -path option of find is modified by the @ symbol for every line of names.list read.