1

I am writing a shell script to do some complex task which is repetitive in nature. To simplify the problem statement, the last step in my complex task is to copy a file from a particular path (which is found based on some complex step) to a pre-defined destination path. And the file that gets copied will have the permission as 600. I want this to be changed to 644.

I am looking at an option where in I can instruct the system to copy that file and change the permission all in one command. Something like - cp -<some_flag> 644 <source_path> <destination_path>

You may say, I can change the permission of the file once it is copied in a 2 step process. However, there is problem with that as well. Reason being, the source path is obtained as an output of another command. So I get the absolute path for the file and not just the file name to write my script to call chmod with a name.

My command last segment looks like - ...| xargs -I {} cp {} /my/destination/path/

So I dont know the name of the file to call chmod after the copy

Improve this question
2
  • 3
    Does your system provide the install command? Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:20
  • No. I can't install it either. We don't have necessary permission to install any additional packages Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:21

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

Just include the chmod in your xargs call:

...| xargs sh -c 'for file; do cp -- "$file" /my/destination/path/ && chmod 700 /my/destination/path/"$file"; done' sh

See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/156010/22222 for more on the specific format used.

Note that if your input to xargs is a full path and not a file name in the local directory, you will need to use ${file##*/} to get the file name only:

...| xargs sh -c 'for file; do cp -- "$file" /my/destination/path/ && chmod 700 /my/destination/path/"${file##*/}"; done' sh
Improve this answer
3
  • @steeldriver ah yes, good point. Depends on what the OP is doing of course, and we have no information to go on. Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:50
  • Yeah, it worked with the modification what @steeldriver mentioned. Thanks both. Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:56
  • Glad to hear it! Since we now know it's needed, I added steeldriver's improvement to the answer. Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:58

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.