[SOLVED] find specific files and copy to new folder

Issue

I am trying to find all txt files in mutiple directories and use the contents of file to match each txt file and copy them to a new directory (all). Not every directory will have a match and there are more then txt files inside each, but those are not needed. The below executes but no files are copied. Thank you :).

dir

123456789000
  123456789000_00a.txt
  123456789000_00b.txt
  123456789000_04a.txt
  123456789000_04b.txt
  123456789000_05a.txt
  123456789000_05b.txt
123456789111
  123456789111_00a.txt
  123456789111_00b.txt
123456789222
  123456789222_00a.txt
  123456789222_00b.txt

file

123456789000_00
123456789000_04
123456789111_00

desired all

123456789000_00a.txt
123456789000_00b.txt
123456789000_04a.txt
123456789000_04b.txt
123456789111_00a.txt
123456789111_00b.txt

bash

for a in *; do  # loop and read into a
  [ -d "$a" ] || continue # ensure a is directory
    cd "$a" ## descend into each $a
     find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec cp {} ${dest} \; # find txt file in directory and use file to match
    cd ..  ## go one directory back
done  <file  ## close loop

Solution

Your sample code doesn't actually use the content of file at all, it's looping over a glob (presumably matching your directories), changing into each directory and attempting to grab all txt files. You also have a syntax error in $(dest} which may be why nothing gets copied.

This is closer to what you described:

while IFS= read -r line ; do
  find -type f -name "${line}*txt" -exec cp {} "${dest}" \; 
done < file

Answered By - tjm3772

Answer Checked By - Mary Flores (WPSolving Volunteer)