[SOLVED] How to copy files to the timestamp auto generated folder?

Issue

Hello I am trying to copy all files from Documents directory to the backup directory that has a timestamp. So I have created a folder called bk$( the time stamp of the folder) and I am trying to copy files from the Documents directory to the new created folder that is unique. This will be in a crontab backing up files from documents and when the backup will kick in, it will create new directory for each backup that is uniquely identified by the folder timestamp. For some reason I cannot get the cp or cpio -mdp. Now someone had mentioned I could use $PATH variable which seems promising, if that is the solution, if someone could help me out on making it work.

bkdest=home/user/backup/
bksource="/home/user/Documents/"
export PATH=/$bkdest:$PATH
mkdir /"$bkdest"bk.$(date +%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M_%S)
cp /"$bksource"* $PATH

My other approach which I have tried to use to make it work:

cp $bksource * ls | tail -l | $PATH

I could have gone with the ctime but unfortunately it does not work with the folder creation date.

This was my approach but with the latest created folder and not file

find $HOME -type d -daystart ctime 0

If someone could please help me out to copy to that new folder, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

Solution

Store the target name in a variable:

bkdest=/home/user/backup
bksource=/home/user/Documents

target=${bkdest}/bk.$(date +%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M_%S)
mkdir -p $target
cp ${bksource}/* ${target}/

Note I tidied up your use of variables a little.

Also, this won't copy subdirectories. For that you need to use cp -R. When I do backups I prefer to use rsync.

Answered By - paddy