How to copy all HTML files from a directory tree to a single directory

I want to copy all the .html files from myDir and its subdirectories to ~/otherDir. Here’s what I tried, but it doesn’t work:

$ find myDir -name *.html -print | xargs -0 cp ~/otherDir
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file target_file
       cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file ... target_directory

Answers:

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Method 1

First of all, the shell is globbing the ‘*’ for you. Either escape it with or use quotes around *.html

Like so:

find myDir -name "*.html" or find myDir -name *.html

Skip the use of xargs with find‘s -exec switch:

find myDir -name "*.html" -exec cp {} ~/otherDir ;

This works because {} takes the place of the file that find found, and is executed once for each match.

Also note that this will flatten the copy of the source directory. Example:

myDir/a.html
myDir/b/c.html

will yield

otherdir/a.html
otherdir/c.html

Method 2

So you want to copy all the .html files in some source directory and its subdirectories, all to a single directory (i.e. collapsing the hierarchy)?

POSIX Standard:

find myDir -name '*.html' -type f -exec sh -c 'cp "<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="684c28">[email protected]</a>" "$0"' ~/otherDir {} +

Note that ~/otherDir becomes parameter 0 to the intermediate shell, which allows for the source files to be precisely "[email protected]". Leaving the target directory outside the shell has the additional advantage that you won’t run into quoting issues if that’s a variable in the parent shell script (-exec sh -c 'cp "[email protected]" "$0"' "$target").

For older systems that don’t have find … -exec … +:

find myDir -name '*.html' -type f -exec cp {} ~/otherDir ;

I your shell is bash ≥4 or zsh:

shopt -s globstar  # only for bash, put it in your `.bashrc`
cp myDir/**/*.html ~/otherDir/

Method 3

find myDir -name '*.html' -print0 | xargs -0 -J % cp % ~/otherdir

Method 4

Try

find myDir -name '*.html' -exec cp -t ~/otherdir {} +

One problem with this approach is that it doesn’t create any subdirectories so all files get put in ~/otherDir and files that are named the same but in different parts of the myDir tree don’t get copied.

If this would cause you a problem then you can use the following to create the same directory tree within the ~/otherDir tree

find myDir -name '*.html' | cpio -pdm ~/otherdir

I don’t have a mac

find myDir -name '*.html' -print | xargs -I {} cp  {} ~/otherDir

or if you can

find myDir -name '*.html' -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} cp  {} ~/otherDir

as this will be safe for files with spaces in the name.

Method 5

Does OSX support -execdir for find?

 find ./myDir -name "*.html" -execdir cp {} /abspath/to/otherDir ";"

Gnu/find suggests using -execdir instead of -exec for most cases.

Method 6

ls myDir/*.html | xargs -I {} cp {} ~/otherDir

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0