[OT] Argument list too long

[Eldridge, Michael]

> > cp -r /media/nethd/Sound/a* /media/Sound/
> 
> I tried this and it works.
> 
> Can I do something like (pseudo code):
> foreach 
> (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789)
>    cp -r /media/nethd/Sound/$_* /media/Sound/
> next
> 
> I am not a bash programmer but I heard/read that you can do 
> stuff like 
> this in the batch

you can, by following this construct:

	$ for i in a b c d e; do cp -r /media/nethd/Sound/$i /media/Sound/; done

however, rather than typing all those out on the command
line, you could be a little sneakier:

	$ for i in `ls /media/nethd/Sound/ | cut -c 1 | uniq`; do cp -r /media/nethd/Sound/$i /media/Sound; done

the -c argument to cut will output only the characters specified
(in our case, the first character) and uniq will, as the name
suggests, eliminates duplicates.

-mike