Changing suffix on bash file backup

Question

I have been trying to change the suffix on my backup files using the --suffix function but I'm not quite sure how to do it. Currently this line of code

find ./$1 -name "IMG_****.JPG" -exec cp --backup=t {} ./$2 \;

searches the first command line argument directory for images in the IMG_****.JPG format and copies them to the directory entered second, making copies of any files with duplicate names and adding the =t suffix to the end giving IMG_****.JPG.~1~ etc. Instead of .~1~ I would like to add something like .JPG, any ideas on how to use the --suffix to do this?

It does not look like --suffix works at all, at least on Ubuntu 15.10 — TheFiddlerWins, Nov 24 '15 at 21:28
Ignore that, cp saw that I already had the ~ in there andexisting is the default — TheFiddlerWins, Nov 24 '15 at 21:30

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 24 '15 at 21:28

Read the man page:

The backup suffix is '~', unless set with --suffix or SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX.

It should be pretty obvious from this sentence that supplying --suffix is equivalent to setting SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX, which as its name suggests only applies to simple backups (i.e., --backup=simple or --backup=never). E.g.,

> touch src dst
> cp --backup=simple --suffix=.bak src dst
> ls src* dst*
dst  dst.bak  src

However, you are requesting numbered backups through --backup=t, so the suffixes you will get will always be .~1~, .~2~, etc., unaffected by --suffix.

Changing suffix on bash file backup

1 Answers1