Copying the files based on modification date in linux

Question

It may be a duplicate question but i could not find the solution for this i want to copy a last 3 months files from one directory to another directory but i could find only to l

Answer 1

Use the -exec option for find:

find . -mtime -90 -exec cp {} targetdir \;

-exec would copy every result returned by find to the specified directory (targetdir in the above example).

Answer 2

I guess I would first store the list of files temporarily and use a loop.

find . -mtime -90 -ls >/tmp/copy.todo.txt

You can read the list, if it is not too big, with

for f in `cat /tmp/copy.todo.txt`;
do echo $f;
done

Note: the quotes around cat... are backquotes, often in upper left corner of keyboard

You can then replace the echo command with a copy command:

for f in `cat /tmp/copy.todo.txt`;
do cp $f /some/directory/
done

Answer 3

One can also select the exact date and time other than going back to certain amount of days

cp  `find . -type f -newermt '18 sep 2016 20:05:00'` FOLDER

Above copies all the files in the directory that were created after 18 september 2016 20:05:00 to the FOLDER (3 months before today :)

Be careful with the symbol for the find command, it is NOT this one: ' it is this, a backtick: ` date selection is with this: '

If you have files with spaces,newlines, tabs or wildcards in their names, you can use either of the solutions from Stéphane Chazelas, first is for GNU, second is for GNU or some BSDs:

find . -type f -newermt '18 sep 2016 20:05:00' -exec cp -t FOLDER {} + 
find . -type f -newermt '18 sep 2016 20:05:00' -exec sh -c 'cp "$@" FOLDER' sh {} +

Answer 4

Ex: select day 09/08/2017

ls -l
 -rw-rw-rw-    1    root     system          943   Aug   09   02:59  File

for j in `ls -l |awk '{ if ($7 == "09") print $9}'`
    do
        mv $j $Destination;
    done

Answer 5

Use this command:

for i in `ls -lrt | grep "jul" | awk '{print $9}' `; do cp $i* /some/folder/; done