How To Copy A Group of Files To Different Name?

[Uwe Doering]

Drew Tomlinson wrote:
> How can I copy a group of files to a different name.  I want to copy all 
> files starting with 'bacula*' to 'bacula*.old'.  So I have these four 
> files:
> 
> blacklamb# ll bac*
> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   949 Apr 22 09:13 bacula-barcodes
> -rw-r-----  1 root  wheel  5792 May 17 16:52 bacula-dir.conf
> -rw-r-----  1 root  wheel   763 Apr 22 09:13 bacula-fd.conf
> -rw-r-----  1 root  wheel  1909 May 17 16:31 bacula-sd.conf
> 
> I want to have copies of these files with '.old' appended to their 
> names.  I've tried 'cp -pv bac* bac*.old' but cp complains.  Because 
> it's only 4 files, I'll do each one independently but I'd like to know 
> how to do this "right" for future reference.

You may want to take a look at the utility 'mmv' in the ports tree 
('ports/misc/mmv' in CVS).  For copying you would use the 'mcp' variant:

   mcp -v 'bacula*' 'bacula=1.old'

It automatically preserves permissions and modification time.  For a 
test run in order to verify in advance what would happen, use the '-n' 
option.

Great tool IMHO.

    Uwe
-- 
Uwe Doering         |  EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers
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