I have a series of files of the form:
test_0000.txt test_0001.txt ... test_0009.txt
and I would like to copy a subset of them to a sub directory
subdir/
It is my intention to use strings stored as variables and combine them to create the copy command, and use brace expansion to set the indexes I want to copy.
Here is my attempt at a solution:
prefix='test'
suffix='.txt'
imin=0 imax=9
stride=4
cp $prefix000{$imin..$imax..$stride}$suffix subdir/
however this yields:
cp: cannot stat '{0..9..4}.txt': No such file or directory
There are two problems I see, the first being that $prefix and 000 might be interpreted as if I am referring to a variable $prefix000. The second being if I write this with quotations to avoid that issue:
cp $prefix'000'{$imin'..'$imax'..'$stride}$suffix' subdir/'
then the brace expansion does not happen. My expected result from the command is:
cp test_0000.txt subdir/
cp test_0004.txt subdir/
cp test_0008.txt subdir/
Any help would be appreciated.