BASH script to copy random directory contents to another location

Question

The title pretty much says it all. What i am trying to accomplish is the following,

I have 12 Directories each which will contain 12 files. I want to create a script that will run everyday at midnight, at that time it needs to randomly select one of the 12 directories and copy all 12 files in that directory to another location. It will also need to delete any files in the destination directory before it copies the new files over.

Thanks,

Heinrich

Hi John, at the moment the whole thing unfortunately, i haven't done any scripting before and not sure where to start. — Heinrich, Jun 26 '14 at 10:36

LinuxDisciple · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-27T03:57:47.490

1

crontab entry (run at midnight)

0 0 * * * /tmp/myscript.bash

Here's the contents of /tmp/myscript.bash:

#!/bin/bash
#Destination directory
destDir=/mnt/stuff/someDir

#a randomly chosen directory name
#Dirs to copy from are named dir0,dir1,dir2,dir3,dir4,dir5,dir6,dir7,dir8,dir9,dir10,dir11
dirName=dir$(($RANDOM%12))
#You can add a case statement to set a different name
# based on the number that's chosen in case you already
# had 12 dirs with names other than the integers I've listed.

#Clear out the existing files from the destination dir
rm "${destDir}"/*

#move the files from the 'random' directory to the destination
mv "${dirName}"/* "${destDir}"

(I would suggest storing the script somewhere other than /tmp)

edited Jun 27 '14 at 03:57

answered Jun 26 '14 at 11:07

LinuxDisciple

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Thank you very much, this does exactly what i needed and far less complicated than anything else I've researched and found elsewhere. Thank you for your quick reply – Heinrich Jun 26 '14 at 11:15
1

This lacks quotes and will break on paths with spaces. – Adrian Frühwirth Jun 26 '14 at 11:25

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 26 '14 at 11:14

0

Just another way to select folders randomly

#! /bin/sh

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
    cd "$1";
fi

ls -1 | awk 'BEGIN {srand()}
    {x[NR] = $0}
    END {print "Selected", x[1 + int(rand() * NR)]}'

answered Jun 26 '14 at 11:14

Srini V

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BASH script to copy random directory contents to another location

2 Answers2