Changing suffix on bash file backup

Question

I have been trying to change the suffix on my backup files using the --suffix function but I'm not quite sure how to do it. Currently this line of code

find ./$1 -name "IMG_****.JPG" -exec cp --backup=t {} ./$2 \;

searches the first command line argument directory for images in the IMG_****.JPG format and copies them to the directory entered second, making copies of any files with duplicate names and adding the =t suffix to the end giving IMG_****.JPG.~1~ etc. Instead of .~1~ I would like to add something like .JPG , any ideas on how to use the --suffix to do this?

Answer 1

Read the man page :

The backup suffix is ' ~ ', unless set with --suffix or SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX .

It should be pretty obvious from this sentence that supplying --suffix is equivalent to setting SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX , which as its name suggests only applies to simple backups (ie, --backup=simple or --backup=never ). Eg,

> touch src dst
> cp --backup=simple --suffix=.bak src dst
> ls src* dst*
dst  dst.bak  src

However, you are requesting numbered backups through --backup=t , so the suffixes you will get will always be .~1~ , .~2~ , etc., unaffected by --suffix .