Unix cp argument list too long

Question

I am using AIX.

When I try to copy all the file in a folder to another folder with the following command:

cp ./00012524/*.PDF ./dummy01

The

Answer 1

The cp command has a limitation of files which you can copy simultaneous.

One possibility you can copy them using multiple times the cp command bases on your file patterns, like:

cp ./00012524/A*.PDF ./dummy01
cp ./00012524/B*.PDF ./dummy01
cp ./00012524/C*.PDF ./dummy01
...
cp ./00012524/*.PDF ./dummy01

You can also copy trough find command:

find ./00012524 -name "*.PDF" -exec cp {} ./dummy01/ \;

Answer 2

The -t flag to cp is useful here:

find ./00012524 -name \*.PDF -print | xargs cp -t ./dummy01

Answer 3

You should be able use a for loop, e.g.

for f in $(ls ./00012524/*.pdf)
do
    cp $f ./dummy01
done

I have no way of testing this, but it should work in theory.

Answer 4

Use find command in *nix:

find ./00012524 -type f -name "*.PDF" -exec cp {} ./dummy01/ \; -print

Answer 5

The best command to copy large number of files from one directory to another.

find /path/to/source/ -name "*" -exec cp -ruf "{}" /path/to/destination/ \;

This helped me a lot.

Answer 6

$ ( cd 00012524; ls | grep '\.PDF$' | xargs -I{} cp {} ../dummy01/ )