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.

Solution 1

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;

Solution 2

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 {} \;

Solution 3

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.

Comments

[user9517]

What do you mean by list it?

[FELDAP]

Like, finding the files of certain types and list them using stdout in console or store it in a file.

[user9517]

so you want to make a list of the files that you have put in the tar file ?

[FELDAP]

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.

[jimbobmcgee]

...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

[FELDAP]

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 :)

[jimbobmcgee]

A tar of each file (file1.tar, file2.tar,...,filen.tar)? Or a tar of each group of files (.log, *.tmp,...,.etc)?

[FELDAP]

A tar of each file. (File.tar, tile2.tar, ...,filen.tar).

[jimbobmcgee]

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

[FooBee]

A tar of each file doesn't make any sense. If you want to compress the files, use gzip instead of tar.

[FELDAP]

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]

Thanks. But its not working. It produces some strange outputs in console in weird characters.

[Valentin Bajrami]

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

[Hennes]

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).

[jimbobmcgee]

Edited answer...

[FELDAP]

Thanks.But it only lists the files, not compressing it.

[jimbobmcgee]

...which is what I said in the edit. You would have to run the statements it returns to do the actual compression.

[jimbobmcgee]

OK, edited again...

[Falcon Momot]

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.

[spuder]

I think 'tar.z' be 'tar.gz' since the .gz extension is more common.