Hi. Thanks for looking into this my request. In my case, I have to bulk-move about 2500 files. This is part of a recurring sync job that has to mirror an existing hierarchy into a new hierarchy with different naming rules.
It takes no time to create the mapping (even in bash script, case statement). When I "pipe" the mapping into "ln" (with xargs) it takes >2 min to create the symlinks. Practically, all the time is spent on launching "ln". With a custom perl script - it's 3 seconds. While technically a performance issue, the 2 minute is beyond my SLA (1 minute to do the sync, including ). With the xargs approach, the solution does not scale well. I believe this function will have broader use cases: I researched Stack-Overflow before posting, and could not find any good Linux solution (other than custom scripts). I believe effort is relatively small. Yair On Sun, Aug 25, 2024 at 8:22 AM Pádraig Brady <p...@draigbrady.com> wrote: > On 25/08/2024 12:39, Yair Lenga wrote: > > Greetings!, > > > > The 'cp' and 'ln' command provides the ability to perform 'bulk' > operation, > > by specifying multiple source files and a target destination. In > > addition to convenience, this approach provides significant > > performance benefits, compared with running multiple cp/ln commands, one > > for each file. > > > > One limit of the bulk approach is that the destination file name must > match > > the source files name. There are multiple cases where this assumption is > > not true. Common example include copying of source files into a new > > directory layout, or renaming of files that can not be expressed based on > > rules. > > > > One common solution is to use a scripting engine (Python, Perl, Node), > > which can perform the operation without spinning a process per file. > Simple > > for basic operation (especially, bulk renames), but those tools do not > have > > the power/flexibility of cp, > > > > My suggestion: Add '--pairs' option to those tools, which will allow the > > tool to work on pairs of arguments, within the same invocation. > > > > cp --pairs ... -- source1 dest1 source2 dest2 source3 dest3 > > mv --pairs ... -- source1 dest1 source2 dest2 source3 dest3 > > > > Hope that development team will consider adding this feature into future > > release of cp/mv > > An interesting proposal (for cp,ln,mv,install). > It is a bit of an edge case though, so I'm inclined to think > a performance only interface change is not worth it here? > > thank you, > Pádraig >
