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I try to duplicate a video file x times from the command line by using a for loop, I've tried it like this, but it does not work:

for i in {1..100}; do cp test.ogg echo "test$1.ogg"; done
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Black
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    Isn't your only error the `echo` which should not be there, and the `$1` which should be `$i`? – Julie Pelletier Jun 21 '16 at 06:44
  • if i remove the echo and only use `test$1.ogg` then it says: **test.ogg and test.ogg are the same files**, so it seems like $1 is not recognized? – Black Jun 21 '16 at 06:45
  • @EdwardBlack: Sound like I mis-understood your requirements. That solution is not suitable. – cuonglm Jun 21 '16 at 06:47
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    @JuliePelletier, damn, it happens sometimes to me that i accidentially write `$1` instead of `$i`, it is earlie in the morning, sorry... thank you. I will use `$x` in the future instead of `$i` – Black Jun 21 '16 at 06:49

5 Answers5

60

Your shell code has two issues:

  1. The echo should not be there.
  2. The variable $i ("dollar i") is mistyped as $1 ("dollar one") in the destination file name.

To make a copy of a file in the same directory as the file itself, use

cp thefile thecopy

If you use more than two arguments, e.g.

cp thefile theotherthing thecopy

then it is assumed that you'd like to copy thefile and theotherthing into the directory called thecopy.

In your case with cp test.ogg echo "test$1.ogg", it specifically looks for a file called test.ogg and one named echo to copy to the directory test$1.ogg.

The $1 will most likely expand to an empty string. This is why, when you delete the echo from the command, you get "test.ogg and test.ogg are the same files"; the command being executed is essentially

cp test.ogg test.ogg

This is probably a mistyping.

In the end, you want something like this:

for i in {1..100}; do cp test.ogg "test$i.ogg"; done

Or, as an alternative

i=0
while (( i++ < 100 )); do
  cp test.ogg "test$i.ogg"
done

Or, using tee:

tee test{1..100}.ogg <test.ogg >/dev/null

Note: This would most likely work for 100 copies, but for thousands of copies it may generate a "argument list too long" error. In that case, revert to using a loop.

Kusalananda
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18
for i in {1..100}; do cp test.ogg "test_$i.ogg" ; done
Vombat
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16

Short and precise 

< test.ogg tee test{1..100}.ogg

or even better do

tee test{1..100}.ogg < test.ogg >/dev/null

see tee command usage for more help.

Update

as suggested by @Gilles, using tee has the defect of not preserving any file metadata. To overcome that issue, you might have to run below command after that:

cp --attributes-only --preserve Source Target
Rahul
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2

The folowing command will copy file.a 5 times:

$ seq 5 | xargs -I AA cp file.a fileAA.a

If you prefer dd (not the same as cp!):

$ seq 5 | xargs -I AA dd if=file.a of=fileAA.a
Dmitry
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1

You have not called variable i while copying

use below script . As tested it worked fine

for i in {1..10}; do cp -rvfp test.ogg test$i.ogg ;done
Praveen Kumar BS
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    This is the same as two previous answers and a comment except (1) the question asks about 100, and your answer uses 10, (2) you have unnecessarily added the `-rvf` options to `cp`, and (3) you have failed to quote your variable expansion. (Also note that it’s conventional to have a space between punctuation symbols like `;` and the following word.) The addition of the `-p` option is valuable, but (4a) it’s been addressed already (in comments), and (4b) your answer isn’t helpful if you don’t explain what you’re doing. – Scott - Слава Україні Jan 17 '18 at 20:03