any sysadmins up? shell question:

[Naja-ram]

I have a file I want to copy to a few directories at once.
the file is located in /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt and I want to copy it to the following:
/var/www/dir1/
/var/www/dir2/
/var/www/dir3/
/var/www/dir4/

so I tried to use:

cp /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt  /var/www/dir*/myfile.txt

I got:

cp: copying multiple files, but last argument `/var/www/dir2/myfile.txt' is not a directory

it is.

I also tried

cp /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt /var/www/dir*/

and got:

cp: omitting directory `/var/www/dir0'

ofcourse I tried things like cp /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt /var/www/dir[0-9]/

also tried using the -r parameter.



I am root on the server.

what'chya say?

[PussyTeenies]

use

for i in $(ls -1d /var/www/|grep -v dir0); do cp /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt /var/www/$i;done

breakdown

you make a listing of all directories except dir0
then you copy the mytext to all directories found ;)

[PussyTeenies]

ah and

cp: omitting directory `/var/www/dir0'

thats just that you are trying a copy to a allready copying directory ;)

hence the grep -v dir0 part in my anwser

[fuzebox]

I'd do this:

foreach `ls -d /var/www/dir?`;do cp /var/www/dir0/myfile.txt $i;done

It'll throw up an error about /var/www/dir0 that you can ignore.

At least this works in most installations...