How to zip specific files that are located in subdirectories
Solution 1
You can use bash
Pathname Expansion as follows:
zip run2.zip */Run2.csv
*/Run2.csv
matches every file called Run2.csv
in any subdirectory. If you have very many files that match the glob, this fails because of the shell’s ARG_MAX
limit. To work around that, use:
printf '%s\0' */Run2.csv | xargs -0 zip run2.zip
This uses the builtin printf
to build up a zero-delimited list of the matching files and pipes it to xargs
, which calls zip
as often as necessary. As add
is zip
’s default mode, it updates the archive adding the files to it.
If you need to dig further into an unknown or changing number of subdirectories, set bash
’s globstar
option with
shopt -s globstar
and use:
zip run2.zip **/Run2.csv # or respectively
printf '%s\0' **/Run2.csv | xargs -0 zip run2.zip
**/Run2.csv
matches every file called Run2.csv
in any subdirectory recursively.
Further reading
man zip
/PATTERN MATCHINGman bash
/EXPANSION/Pathname Expansion- Bash Hackers Wiki: Pathname expansion (globbing)
- TLDP Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide: Chapter 18.2. Globbing
Solution 2
you can use something like to search and archive all (for example) Run2.csv
files:
zip run2.zip `find . -name Run2.csv`
By suggestion if OP expect special characters (like space) in file/directories names can use command like:
find . -name Run2.csv -exec zip run2.zip {} +
Solution 3
Try this for finding files and zip them in separate files :
find . -name Run2.csv -print | zip Run2.zip -@
Related videos on Youtube
Nasser
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
-
Nasser over 1 year
I have a directory that consists of many subdirectories, and each subdirectory contains different files such as:
Directory
All
contains subdirectoriesA, B, C, and D
. Each subdirectory contains files such as:A (Run1.csv, Run4.csv) B (Run2.csv, Run3.csv) C (Run1.csv, Run3.csv) D (Run2.csv, Run4.csv)
As you can see, each file has different duplicates in different subdirectories. For example,
Run1.csv
in folderA
has different data fromRun1.csv
in folderC
.What I want to do is that I want to zip a specific run file, for example, I want to zip all the files of run2. I used the following commands:
zip run2.zip All Run2.csv zip run2.zip Run2.csv
But none of them works.
How can I fix that?
-
dessert almost 5 yearsThis fails if any of the file or directory names contain whitespaces, you could use
… -print0 | xargs -0 zip Run2.zip
instead. -
D. Ben Knoble almost 5 yearsIf youre digging further, find might be a good option
-
dessert almost 5 years@D.BenKnoble yes, but I left that to Romeo Ninov for his answer and helped him build the
find
command line. :)