[X-Unix] Copying to multiple directories

[Cloyce D. Spradling]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 03:21:05PM +0000, Stroller wrote:

: What Brian is doing in his posting is DEMONSTRATING the use of the pipe 
: ("|") and the `xargs` command (see `man xargs`), suggesting that you 
: run this, change "fileA" to the name of the file you actually want to 
: copy, and check that it will do what you require. Then run the command 
: again, but WITHOUT the `echo` (use the up-arrow key to bring up the 
: previous line for editing) to actually perform the copying you require.

I do this sort of thing (using xargs) a lot.  Removing the echo works, but
depending on where it is in the line it can be a real PITA.  There are
several shortcuts that you can use to make this process painless.

For removing the echo, you can use some a nifty command-line substitution.
This was originally a csh feature, but every other shell on OSX supports
it.  Simply type

  ^echo^

which says "replace the echo in the previous command with nothing".

Another thing I'll do is just leave the command alone and pipe its output
to sh.  That is:

  ls -d /Users/*/Library | xargs -I % echo cp fileA % | sh

That is quick and easy and not too much typing.  If you want to watch it
happen, just add a '-x':

  ls -d /Users/*/Library | xargs -I % echo cp fileA % | sh -x

--
Cloyce