Rsync with a list of variables

Question

I am trying to write a bash script that will rsync only a specific subset of folders. I am trying to figure out a more slick so that I can just add a variables such as FOLDER1='name of folder in home directory' and then

rsync -arvz --delete /home/emka/$FOLDER1/ /home/emka/Desktop/Mount/$FOLDER1

Currently I have FOLDER1 through FOLDER13, but I do not want to have the above line thirteen times.

Could someone give me a push on how to do this?

Answer 1

Bash allows you to use arrays and loops.

Define each path as an element of an array, then loop through the array.

Answer 2

Bash 3.0+ supports range arrays.

for i in {1..13}
do
    rsync -arvz --delete /home/emka/FOLDER${i}/ /home/emka/Desktop/Mount/FOLDER${i}
done

Answer 3

Some people here don’t seem to have read the original question properly, but as one suggested: you can (and should) use arrays. If you really have the folder names stored in the variables FOLDER1, FOLDER2, etc., and want to keep it that way, you can use the following:

for i in {1..13}; do
   eval "FOLDER=\$FOLDER$i"
   rsync -arvz --delete "/home/emka/$FOLDER/" "/home/emka/Desktop/Mount/$FOLDER"
done

Using quotation marks is a good habit, and in this case they are required, since you have spaces in the directory names.

Answer 4

Using Bash brace expansion you can just do this:

rsync -arvz --delete /home/emka/$FOLDER{1..13} /home/emka/Desktop/Mount/

If you want to use arrays (as some people suggest and which is good idea) then it is still possible to use one rsync without loop as long as folder names in array do not end with slash.

cd /home/emka
rsync -arvz --delete ${folderarray[@]} /home/emka/Desktop/Mount/

Put "echo" in the beginning of this line to see what it is going to do before first use :-)