Using regular expressions with cp

Question

This is a simple question. I'm trying to copy all of the files in the current directory that start with "axis-2" and end with ".jar" into a target directory, let's say it's ~/MyDirectory. My first thought was to try

cp '^axis2.*jar$' ~/MyDirectory

But this isn't working. I'm not even sure I can use regular expressions with cp. I also haven't really used regular expressions in a while and my syntax could be totally off. When I try this cp just outputs a "No such file or directory" error message. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to go about this? Thanks!

Solution 1

The UNIX shell uses glob patterns, not regular expressions. So, if you want to match file names starting with axis2 and ending with .jar, you use:

cp axis2*.jar /destination/directory

Solution 2

If you have GNU find and GNU cp available, you can use regular expressions as in the following command:

find . -maxdepth 1 -regextype posix-basic -regex '.*/axis2[^/]*jar$' \
       -exec cp -t ~/MyDirectory {} +

This can be handy if neither glob pattern nor bash extended glob pattern suite your needs.

Solution 3

I really like the regex syntax of the rename perl script (by Robin Barker and Larry Wall), e.g.:

rename "s/OldFile/NewFile/" OldFile*

OldFile.c and OldFile.h are renamed to NewFile.c and NewFile.h, respectively

I simply wanted the exact same thing with a copy command:

copy "s/OldFile/NewFile/" OldFile*

So I duplicated that script and changed the rename statement to copy via File::Copy. Et voila! A copy command with perl-regex syntax: jcward/copy.

Comments

[Nick Van Hoogenstyn]

Thanks a lot! I figured it out on my own, but I didn't know about glob patterns so that's helpful and informative.