How to find files of certain extension and tar each of them in to another location

Question

I have script for finding files of certain type and compress them to a single tar archive and put in to other place. But now, there is a change in requirement, that I need to find files of certain type, list it and compress each of them to a tar archive and put it to other place. Currently I'm using the script

cd /to/top/of/dir/structure
tar -cf /path/to/tarfile.tar --files-from /dev/null # trick to create empty tar file
find . -type f ! -name '*.log' -print0 | xargs -0 tar -uvf /path/to/tarfile.tar

which I have taken from this post : https://superuser.com/questions/436441/copy-every-file-with-a-certain-extension-recursive

So, the above script find certain file type and then archive it as single tar file and then place it to another location. But my question is, I need to find files of certain type, list them, tar each of the listed files and put them into other location.

Like, finding the files of certain types and list them using stdout in console or store it in a file. — FELDAP, Jan 23 '13 at 12:53
so you want to make a list of the files that you have put in the tar file ? — user9517, Jan 23 '13 at 12:57
No, after finding the files of certain type, I would like to list it and then tar each of the listed files to a certain location. — FELDAP, Jan 23 '13 at 12:59
...but you are already doing that, no? Are you saying you want to handle multiple types of file? If so, add more `find` statements to your script -- they will be run sequentially — jimbobmcgee, Jan 23 '13 at 13:01
Ok, files are listed. But the thing is, the above script will only make a single tar archive of all the listed files. But I need to make tar archive of each listed files. Hope you got my point :) — FELDAP, Jan 23 '13 at 13:05
A tar of each file (file1.tar, file2.tar,...,filen.tar)? Or a tar of each group of files (*.log, *.tmp,...,*.etc)? — jimbobmcgee, Jan 23 '13 at 13:08
Any particular reason? You know `tar` doesn't strictly *compress*, right (unless you add `-z` for a gzip file)? You might be better off with straight gzip for a per-file approach — jimbobmcgee, Jan 23 '13 at 13:11
A tar of each file doesn't make any sense. If you want to compress the files, use `gzip` instead of `tar`. — Sven, Jan 23 '13 at 13:12
Ok. As per your recommendation, gzip is good. But how do I implement or modify the script to do so? I'm new to scripting. — FELDAP, Jan 23 '13 at 13:16

jimbobmcgee · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-24T11:59:00.903

3

I'm going with...

cd /to/top/of/dir/structure
find . -type f ! -iname '*.log' -exec gzip -c {} \> /path/to/gzips/\`basename {}\`.gz \;

...but I haven't tested it.

And I'm really dubious it will be what you really need...

Edit

I can get it as far as...

find /path/to/top-level -iname "*.log" -printf "gzip -c %p > /path/to/gzips/%f.gz\n"

...to output the commands you would want to run.

I'm still working on executing those commands, short of -fprinting to a temp file, chmod +x and executing that.

Not to mention dealing with any issues escaping awkward characters in filenames.

Edit #2

OK, I can't get it down to one line (which was my challenge, not yours), but I can get it into a fairly simple script:

#!/bin/bash

function compress_file {
  BASENAME=`/bin/basename "$1"`;
  /bin/gzip -c "$1" > /path/to/gzips/$BASENAME.gz;
}

export -f compress_file;
/bin/find /path/to/top-level -iname "*.log" -exec /bin/bash -c 'compress_file "$0"' {} \;
export -fn compress_file;

edited Jan 24 '13 at 11:59

answered Jan 23 '13 at 13:21

jimbobmcgee

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Thanks. But its not working. It produces some strange outputs in console in weird characters. – FELDAP Jan 23 '13 at 13:50
This should work `touch {file1,file2,file3,file4}.txt file10.log; find . ! -name '*.log' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 tar cvf tarr.tar {} \; 2>/dev/null` – Valentin Bajrami Jan 23 '13 at 14:26
That satisfies the Ops original goal. However after reading the dozens of comments on the OP it is clear that there is a new goal: bzipped copies of the log. (one file per log, not one big tar). – Hennes Jan 23 '13 at 14:28
Edited answer... – jimbobmcgee Jan 23 '13 at 14:43
Thanks.But it only lists the files, not compressing it. – FELDAP Jan 24 '13 at 06:27
...which is what I said in the edit. You would have to run the statements it returns to do the actual compression. – jimbobmcgee Jan 24 '13 at 11:30
1

OK, edited again... – jimbobmcgee Jan 24 '13 at 11:59

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 16 '13 at 10:07

3

Without a pipe (or xargs), creating several tar files instead of just one, and deleting the non-compressed files, here is how you can do it:

find /path/to/files -name "*.ext" -type f -exec tar -czf {}.tar.z {} \; -exec rm {} \;

edited Sep 16 '13 at 10:07

Falcon Momot

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answered Sep 16 '13 at 07:58

Scarabée Jedi

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Alas! I don't think very many of us speak French very well. I've tried to translate you, though. Feel free to edit it if my French is bad. – Falcon Momot Sep 16 '13 at 10:04
I think 'tar.z' be 'tar.gz' since the .gz extension is more common. – spuder Jun 01 '15 at 19:07

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 23 '13 at 14:37

1

Find the files and build a list, tell tar to make an archive from the list....

find /path/to/files -name "*.ext" | tar cJfTP /path/to/archive.txz -

Side note: your example doesn't compress the file, it just archives it.

answered Jan 23 '13 at 14:37

Chris S

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 16 '22 at 16:35

0

find . -type f ( -name ".php" -o -name ".js" -o -name ".css" -o -name ".crt" -o -name ".htm*" -o -name ".txt" -o -name ".$" -o -name ".xml" -o -name ".ht" ) -print0 | tar -czpf $FILE --null -T -

answered Jan 16 '22 at 16:35

Garret krampe

1

How to find files of certain extension and tar each of them in to another location

4 Answers4

Edit

Edit #2