How do I do a selective, recursive copy ? Bash script ?

[Peter Langfelder]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a huge multi level directory of legally ripped music.   I ripped
> my CDs as flac and mp3.
>
> How do I easily copy just the mp3 files onto another drive ?  Ie, ignore
> the flac files and copy only the mp3 files ?  I want to keep the
> directory structure intact.
>
> The main directory is Music.  In Music is BandA, BandB, BandC, etc.
> Inside BandA is Record1, Record2, Record3, etc.
> Inside Record 1 is song1.flac, song1.mp3, song2.flac, song2.mp3, etc.
>
> I want to preserve the directory structure. I feel a script coming on.
> Am I right ?

Look at the man page for rsync. Basically a command like

rsync -avu --exclude='*.flac' oldDir/ newDir/

should do what you want, that is copy the contents of oldDir into
newDir preserving the directory structure, and it'll preserve
ownership and timestamps as well.

HTH

Peter