How to tar certain file types in all subdirectories?
LinuxTarLinux Problem Overview
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?
Linux Solutions
Solution 1 - Linux
find ./someDir -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" | tar -cf my_archive -T -
Solution 2 - Linux
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.
Solution 3 - Linux
One method is:
tar -cf my_archive.tar $( find -name "*.php" -or -name "*.html" )
There are some caveats with this method however:
- It will fail if there are any files or directories with spaces in them, and
- 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.
Solution 4 - Linux
This will handle paths with spaces:
find ./ -type f -name "*.php" -o -name "*.html" -exec tar uvf myarchives.tar {} +
Solution 5 - Linux
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
Solution 6 - Linux
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
Solution 7 - Linux
Easy with zsh:
tar cvzf foo.tar.gz **/*.(php|html)
Solution 8 - Linux
tar -cf my_archive `find ./ | grep '.php\|.html'`
Use "find" and "grep" to get all path of .php and .html files in all directory and its sub-directories. Then pass those path information to tar to compress.
Please be careful with those symbol ` and '. Note also that this will hit the limit of how many characters your shell will allow on the command line, unlike some of the other answers.