adb pull multiple files

Question

What is the best way to pull multiple files using

adb pull

I have on my /sdcard/ 25 files with following name:

gps1.trace
gps2.trace
...
gps25.trace

Wildcard does not work:

adb pull /sdcard/gps*.trace .

Solution 1

You can use xargs and the result of the adb shell ls command which accepts wildcards. This allows you to copy multiple files. Annoyingly the output of the adb shell ls command includes line-feed control characters that you can remove using tr -d '\r'.

Examples:

# Using a relative path
adb shell 'ls sdcard/gps*.trace' | tr -d '\r' | xargs -n1 adb pull
# Using an absolute path 
adb shell 'ls /sdcard/*.txt' | tr -d '\r' | sed -e 's/^\///' | xargs -n1 adb pull

Solution 2

adb pull can receive a directory name instead of at file and it will pull the directory with all files in it.

Pull all your gps traces in /sdcard/gpsTraces

adb pull /sdcard/gpsTraces/ . 

Example of adb pull and adb push of recursive directories:

C:\Test>adb pull /data/misc/test/ .
pull: building file list...
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.3 -> ./test1/test2/test.3
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.2 -> ./test1/test2/test.2
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.1 -> ./test1/test2/test.1
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test.3 -> ./test1/test.3
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test.2 -> ./test1/test.2
pull: /data/misc/test/test1/test.1 -> ./test1/test.1
pull: /data/misc/test/test.3 -> ./test.3
pull: /data/misc/test/test.2 -> ./test.2
pull: /data/misc/test/test.1 -> ./test.1
9 files pulled. 0 files skipped.
0 KB/s (45 bytes in 0.093s)
C:\Test>adb push . /data/misc/test/
push: ./test1/test2/test.3 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.3
push: ./test1/test2/test.2 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.2
push: ./test1/test2/test.1 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test2/test.1
push: ./test1/test.3 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test.3
push: ./test1/test.2 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test.2
push: ./test1/test.1 -> /data/misc/test/test1/test.1
push: ./test.3 -> /data/misc/test/test.3
push: ./test.2 -> /data/misc/test/test.2
push: ./test.1 -> /data/misc/test/test.1
9 files pushed. 0 files skipped.
0 KB/s (45 bytes in 0.062s)

Solution 3

./adb pull /sdcard <-- fails

./adb pull /sdcard/ <-- works recursively - note the trailing slash

Tested with Nexus 5 and adb downloaded March 2014.

Solution 4

Parsing the output from 'ls' is generally a bad idea. Instead, use 'find'.

adb shell 'find /sdcard/ -name "gps*.trace" -print0' | xargs -0 -n 1 adb pull

Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls

Solution 5

I have created this for Windows boxes, It is very useful to transfer files using wildcards without mounting the filesystem. You can include this script somewhere in your path env.

adbpull.bat

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
if %1.==. (
    echo Wilcard parameter is required.
    goto end
)
for /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F in (`adb shell ls %1`) do (
    set text=%%F
    set mfile=!text:~0,-1!
    adb pull "!mfile!"
)
:end
endlocal

Example: adbpull /sdcard/DCIM/Camera/IMG_2016*

View more solutions

Comments

[hsz]

Unfortunately I am using Windows with Cygwin. But I have to remember this one - very interesting solution !

[Chris Stratton]

actually those are carriage returns which must be filtered, but right idea on an obscure issue

[Ofir Luzon]

@kakyo It does work for subfolders for me. check you have the latest ADB from google. (I'm using 1.0.29)

[kakyo]

Yes, I found that it works for non-empty folders in the end. I had some empty folders that didn't get pulled. Also, seems that "push" is non-recursive?

[Ofir Luzon]

@kakyo I've added the output of a recursive pull and push to my answer. You are correct about empty folders, they do not get pulled or pushed.

[Admin]

Oh, it didn't work. tar -tvf tells me that the result doesn't look like a tar archive. Oh well.

[sschuberth]

Here's a slightly improved version that can handle spaces in file names: github.com/sschuberth/dev-scripts/blob/master/android/…

[BrainSlugs83]

FYI: Windows and DOS use "\r\n" for carriage-return / line-feed pairs (i.e. not "\n\r").

[rupps]

in my case it failed trying to pull the (correctly obtained) filenames from the android's root directory, to solve it, I used: adb shell "ls -d /mnt/sdcard/Pictures/Screenshots/*" | tr '\r' ' ' | xargs -n1 adb pull

[gronostaj]

I had to use find instead of ls because paths starting with / didn't work and ones without / returned just filename, without full path. (Windows/msys)

[wrkwrk]

It's true that the newline in windows is \n\r, but there's no build-in "tr" or "xargs" command in batch.

[Antonio]

For me it worked recursively without the final slash, adb version 1.0.32

[Stan]

Beware: with ADB pull the files lose their original modified date.

[FuriousGeorge]

See my answer below for a slightly modified version that allows you to pull into remote directories and is slightly more terse

[starfry]

I found your answer useful, but I wondered why you didn't just do tr -d '\r'.

[Rusty Gear]

@Stan: unless you use the "-a" option as in "adb pull [-a] <remote>... <local>", which according to the help preserves the file timestamp and mode.

[Suncatcher]

It doesn't work saying tr is not recognized as an internal or external command

[x'ES]

Very strong way! But the problem is errors/warnings like "tar: removing leading '/' from member names" added to output file. Don't know how to eliminate this.

[Bruno Alexandre Rosa]

tr is an application present in Linux or git bash.

[user905686]

You use wildcards for cp on Android and not for pull on the host, that's why it works. Nice alternative, though copying to /sdcard/ costs extra memory and leaks private files to sdcard.

[Dan J]

On my machine I needed to use the full path to adb, but otherwise this worked great!

[Shayan]

I get 1.5KB file on the output.

[Gary Wang]

Heads up! You need to redirect stderr to somewhere else or you might get a corrupted tar file! See askubuntu.com/a/170000 for reason, and at least test if the result file is not corrupted.