How do I do a selective, recursive copy ? Bash script ?

[linux guy]

I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I ripped
my CDs as flac and mp3.

How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
directory structure intact.

The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.

I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
Am I right ?

Thanks

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:26:22 -0400
Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I
> ripped
>  my CDs as flac and mp3.
>  
>  How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
>  the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
>  directory structure intact.
>  
>  The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
>  Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
>  Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.
>  
>  I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
>  Am I right ? 
Yes.. or you can use rsync locally. See the "--exclude" option

Alan

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 15:26:22 -0400,
  Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I
> ripped
>  my CDs as flac and mp3.
>  
>  How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
>  the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
>  directory structure intact.
>  
>  The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
>  Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
>  Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.
>  
>  I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
>  Am I right ? 
Assuming the destination is a flat directory you could do something like:
cp `find music_directory -type f -name '*.mp3'` destination_dir

[Peter Langfelder]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I
> ripped
>  my CDs as flac and mp3.
>
>  How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
>  the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
>  directory structure intact.
>
>  The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
>  Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
>  Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.
>
>  I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
>  Am I right ? 
Look at the man page for rsync. Basically a command like

rsync -avu --exclude='*.flac' oldDir/ newDir/

should do what you want, that is copy the contents of oldDir into
newDir preserving the directory structure, and it'll preserve
ownership and timestamps as well.

HTH

Peter

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:26:22 -0400, Linuxguy123 wrote:

>  I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I
> ripped
>  my CDs as flac and mp3.
>  
>  How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
>  the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
>  directory structure intact.
>  
>  The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
>  Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
>  Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.
>  
>  I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
>  Am I right ? 
Since you mention Bash in the subject line, yes, it would be possible
with Bash (some hints: Parameter Expansion, man basename, mkdir -p).

[linux guy]

On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 14:39 -0700, Peter Langfelder wrote:

>  Look at the man page for rsync. Basically a command like
>  
>  rsync -avu --exclude='*.flac' oldDir/ newDir/ 
Task completed. rsync worked great.  Thanks

[linux guy]

On Mon, 2008-10-27 at 14:39 -0700, Peter Langfelder wrote:
>  On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Linuxguy123
> <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  > I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
>  > Am I right ?
>  
>  Look at the man page for rsync. Basically a command like
>  
>  rsync -avu --exclude='*.flac' oldDir/ newDir/
>  
>  should do what you want, that is copy the contents of oldDir into
>  newDir preserving the directory structure, and it'll preserve
>  ownership and timestamps as well. 
That does help.  Thanks, Peter.   I knew about rsync as I used it once,
but I didn't realize it could exclude files.   Great tip.