CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxtar
user1566515
user1566515

Reputation: 1691

How to tar certain file types in all subdirectories?

I want to tar and all .php and .html files in a directory and its subdirectories. If I use

tar -cf my_archive *

it tars all the files, which I don't want. If I use

tar -cf my_archive *.php *.html

it ignores subdirectories. How can I make it tar recursively but include only two types of files?

Upvotes: 122

Views: 152416

Answers (8)

Noam Geffen
Noam Geffen

Reputation: 349

Put them in a file

find . \( -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" \) -print > files.txt

Then use the file as input to tar, use -I or -T depending on the version of tar you use

Use h to copy symbolic links

tar cfh my.tar -I files.txt

Upvotes: 2

Walter Tross
Walter Tross

Reputation: 12644

If you want to produce a zipped tar file (.tgz) and want to avoid problems with spaces in filenames:

find . \( -name \*.php -o -name \*.html \) -print0 | xargs -0 tar -cvzf my_archive.tgz

The -print0 “primary” of find separates output filenames using the NULL (\0) byte, thus playing well with the -0 option of xargs, which appends its (NULL-separated, in this case) input as arguments to the command it precedes.

The parentheses around the two -name primaries are needed, because otherwise the -print0 would only output the filenames of the second -name (there is no implied printing if -print or -print0 is present, and these only have an effect if they are evaluated).

If you need to skip some filenames or directories (e.g., the node_modules directory if you work with Node.js), prepend one or more -prune primaries like this:

find . -name skipThisName -prune -o \
  -name skipThisOtherName -prune -o \
  \( -name \*.php -o -name \*.html \) -print0 | xargs -0 tar -cvzf my_archive.tgz

Upvotes: 2

John Delaney
John Delaney

Reputation: 143

Easy with zsh:

tar cvzf foo.tar.gz **/*.(php|html)

Upvotes: 2

Sairam Krish
Sairam Krish

Reputation: 11721

If you're using bash version > 4.0, you can exploit shopt -s globstar to make short work of this:

shopt -s globstar; tar -czvf deploy.tar.gz **/Alice*.yml **/Bob*.json

this will add all .yml files that starts with Alice from any sub-directory and add all .json files that starts with Bob from any sub-directory.

Upvotes: 28

dmitry_podyachev
dmitry_podyachev

Reputation: 649

find ./ -type f -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" -printf '%P\n' |xargs tar -I 'pigz -9' -cf target.tgz

for multicore or just for one core:

find ./ -type f -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" -printf '%P\n' |xargs tar -czf target.tgz

Upvotes: 0

Ian Reinhart Geiser
Ian Reinhart Geiser

Reputation: 475

This will handle paths with spaces:

find ./ -type f -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" -exec tar uvf myarchives.tar {} +

Upvotes: 4

Robin Sheat
Robin Sheat

Reputation: 406

One method is:

tar -cf my_archive.tar $( find -name "*.php" -or -name "*.html" )

There are some caveats with this method however:

  1. It will fail if there are any files or directories with spaces in them, and
  2. it will fail if there are so many files that the maximum command line length is full.

A workaround to these could be to output the contents of the find command into a file, and then use the "-T, --files-from FILE" option to tar.

Upvotes: 22

DeeDee
DeeDee

Reputation: 2761

find ./someDir -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" | tar -cf my_archive -T -

Upvotes: 206

Related Questions