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Help ! Too many files to mv / cp

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Help ! Too many files to mv / cp Linux Help forum discussing topics including usage, troubleshooting, modules, and distributions. Linux is an open source OS, based on UNIX.

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  #1  
Old May 21st, 2002, 09:38 AM
chinook chinook is offline
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Help ! Too many files to mv / cp
Hello,

I have a very large number of files in a directory which i need to move - I'm running Suse Linux.

If I try cp or mv or even zip, I'm told that there are too many arguments to process the command....

Any ideas how I can move these?
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  #2  
Old May 21st, 2002, 12:22 PM
M.Hirsch M.Hirsch is offline
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hi!
you can copy them one after the other like this:
Code:
for i in *; do mv "$i" /tmp/`basename $i`; done

though it could give you the same error. if so, try this:

Code:
find . -exec "mv {$1} /tmp/`basename {$1}`"

where i am not sure about the "{$1}".
see "man find" which the parameter for substitution is.

be sure to copy all quotes! i am not 100% sure if they all are right, so do some testing with filenames with spaces(!)

disclaimer: i take no responsibility if you end up destroying all your data!
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Last edited by M.Hirsch : May 21st, 2002 at 12:24 PM.
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  #3  
Old May 21st, 2002, 03:29 PM
justice41 justice41 is offline
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You could also try, from the directory containg your files,
Code:
tar cf - * | (cd /path/to/newdir/ ; tar xfp - )

although i have never tested this for a very large number of files. I don't know what tar's limitations are compared to cp or mv.

jaa
Last edited by justice41 : May 21st, 2002 at 03:31 PM.
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Old May 21st, 2002, 03:34 PM
M.Hirsch M.Hirsch is offline
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i think the limitation is on the shell or linux kernel itself, not on cp. (but not 100% sure...)

chinook, can you post your results after you tried please?
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Old May 21st, 2002, 04:36 PM
justice41 justice41 is offline
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Yes, you are right.
See here http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6060 for solutions (some of which are in earlier post above)

jaa
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Old May 22nd, 2002, 03:48 AM
chinook chinook is offline
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Hi,

I found this page http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6060 which had a few different methods. The one that I used did actually take quite a long time to mv (5 minutes). I used a function:

function large_mv ()
{ while read line1; do
mv directory/$line1 ../directory2
done
}

ls -1 directory/ | large_mv

Cheers for the replies!
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