Groovy execute “cp *” shell command

Question

I want to copy text files and only text files from src/ to dst/

groovy:000> \"cp src/*.txt dst/\".execute().text       
===> 
groovy:000> 
<         


        

Answer 1

Wildcard expansion is performed by the shell, not by cp (or groovy). Your first example is trying to copy a file named *. You could make your command "sh -c 'cp ...'"

Answer 2

Thanks tedu for getting me half way there.

I believe the reason that his solution didn't work was because of an 'escaping' issue.

For instance...

"sh -c 'ls'".execute()

works. But...

"sh -c 'ls '".execute()

does not.

There is probably a way to escape it properly in line there but the workaround I'm using is to pass a string array to Runtime.getRuntime().exec

command = ["sh", "-c", "cp src/*.txt dst/"]
Runtime.getRuntime().exec((String[]) command.toArray())

works beautifully!