How do I use find to copy and remove extensions keeping the same subdirectory structure [closed]

Question

I'm trying to copy all the files from one directory to another, removing all file extensions at the same time.

From directory 0001:
 0001/a/1.jpg
 0001/b/2.txt

To directory 0002:
 0002/a/1
 0002/b/2

I've tried several find ... | xargs c...p with no luck.

Answer 1

Recursive copies are really easy to to with tar. In your case:

tar -C 0001 -cf - --transform 's/\(.\+\)\.[^.]\+$/\1/' . |
tar -C 0002 -xf -

Answer 2

If you haven't tar with --transform this can works:

TRG=/target/some/where
SRC=/my/source/dir
cd "$SRC"
find . -type f -name \*.\* -printf "mkdir -p '$TRG/%h' && cp '%p' '$TRG/%p'\n" |\
   sed 's:/\.::;s:/./:/:' |\
   xargs -I% sh -c "%"

No spaces after the \, need simple end of line, or you can join it to one line like:

find . -type f -name \*.\* -printf "mkdir -p '$TRG/%h' && cp '%p' '$TRG/%p'\n" | sed 's:/\.::;s:/./:/:' | xargs -I% sh -c "%"

Explanation:

• the find will find all plain files what have extensions in you SRC (source) directory
• the find's printf will prepare the needed shell commands:
  • command for create the needed directory tree at the TRG (target dir)
  • command for copying
• the sed doing some cosmetic path cleaning, (like correcting /some/path/./other/dir)
• the xargs will take the whole line
• and execute the prepared commands with shell

But, it will be much better:

• simply make an exact copy in 1st step
• rename files in 2nd step

easier, cleaner and FASTER (don't need checking/creating the target subdirs)!