mjhjmtu

I am already using below command to copy files from a specific date.

Previously I used this command and it worked well but now it was showing an error:

-bash: /bin/cp: Argument list too long

Commends used:

cd /share/new/
cp `find . -type f -newermt '16 july 2018'` /share/test

I need to copy all files in the folder "new" from July 20th to today date. How can I achieve this?

Don't use cp directly with the output of find.

It might passes way many too files in a single step (and that's why you get the error Argument list too long).

Use the -exec parameter of find, which execute the given command passing a every matched file to cp, one at a time:

cd /share/new/
find . -type f -newermt '16 july 2018' -exec cp /share/test ;

use find -exec:

find /share/new/ -type f -newermt '16 july 2018' -exec cp /share/test ;

Make use of the -exec action of find and the -t option of cp; I also recommend the -i or -n options if you don’t want to overwrite identically named files by accident:

find ... -exec cp -i -t TARGET -- +

The other current answers spawn a cp child process for every matching file while this answer only spawns as many as necessary based on the total program argument length limit (see below) which will make a big difference once you reach a couple of thousand matches which appears to be your case.

From the find(1) manual:

• -exec command ; – Execute command […]. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of ; is encountered. The string is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command […]. The specified command is run once for each matched file. […]




• -exec command + – This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected files, but the command line is built by appending each selected file name at the end; the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched files. […]

From the cp(1) manual:

• 
  -t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY – copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY


• 
  -i, --interactive – prompt before overwrite


• 
  -n, --no-clobber – do not overwrite an existing file

You should try this syntax:

find /share/new/ -type f -newermt '16 july 2018' -exec cp -R /share/test/ ;