Linux – How to recursively bzip2 all files that aren’t bzipped

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How can I recursively bzip2 all files that do not end with the .bz2 extension in Linux?

Best Answer

find is your friend. I reckon the following ought to do it:

find <target_dir> -not -name \*.bz2 -exec bzip2 \{\} \;

i.e. if the dir where the files you want to bzip are is /var/log/blah it would be:

find /var/log/blah -not -name \*.bz2 -exec bzip2 \{\} \;

Related Solutions

Linux – How to set bzip2 block size when using tar

export BZIP=--fast
tar cjf foo.tar.bz2 foo

Or pipe the output of tar to bzip2.

Though you should note from the bzip2 man page:

    -1 (or --fast) to -9 (or --best)
              Set  the  block size to 100 k, 200 k ..  900 k when compressing.
              Has no effect when decompressing.  See MEMORY MANAGEMENT  below.
              The --fast and --best aliases are primarily for GNU gzip compat-
              ibility.  In particular, --fast  doesn't  make  things  signifi-
              cantly faster.  And --best merely selects the default behaviour.

Linux – Recursively copying hidden files – Linux

My favorite to move dirs in general has been:

tar cvf - . | (cd /dest/dir; tar xvf -)

which tars up the current directory to stdout then pipes it to a subshell that first cd's to the destination directory before untarring stdin. Simple, direct, extensible - consider what happens when you replace the () with an ssh to another machine. Or to answer your question you might do:

tar cvf - .* --exclude=\. --exclude=\.\. | (cd /dest/dir; tar xvf -)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to set bzip2 block size when using tar

Linux – Recursively copying hidden files – Linux

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