Copying files from multiple directories into a single destination directory

Question

There are multiple directories which contain a file with the same name:

direct_afaap/file.txt
direct_fgrdw/file.txt
direct_sardf/file.txt
...

N

Answer 1

You can achieve this with Bash parameter expansion:

dest_dir=direct_new

# dir based naming
for file in direct_*/file.txt; do
  [[ -f "$file" ]] || continue # skip if not a regular file
  dir="${file%/*}"             # get the dir name from path
  cp "$file" "$dest_dir/file_${dir#*direct_}.txt"
done

# count based naming
counter=0
for file in direct_*/file.txt; do
  [[ -f "$file" ]] || continue # skip if not a regular file
  cp "$file" "$dest_dir/file_$((++counter)).txt"
done

• dir="${file%/*}" removes all characters starting from /, basically, giving us the dirname
• ${dir#*direct_} removes the direct_ prefix from dirname
• ((++counter)) uses Bash arithmetic expression to pre-increment the counter

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See also:

• Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls(1)
• Get file directory path from file path
• How to use double or single brackets, parentheses, curly braces