How to copy all log files from a particular date to the current date?

I want to copy the log files from a particular date, say Nov 18, to the current date. How can I do that?

You can use the following find command:

find /path/to/logs/dir -type f -newermt '2022-11-18' -exec cp {} /path/to/copy/dir \;

• Replace /path/to/logs/dir and /path/to/copy/dir with the paths to the directory where your logs are and the directory you want to copy the logs to, respectively.

• -type f is used to search for files only.

• -newermt '2022-11-18' is used to find files that were last modified (this is the mt part of -newermt) after November 18 2022. Time formats are interpreted similarly to date's -d option, so you can use -newermt 'November 18 2022' or any format that date -d can handle. See man date for more.

• -exec cp {} /path/to/copy/dir is used to copy each found file ({}) to /path/to/copy/dir.

Note that find looks for files recursively, so it will also look for files that satisfy the required criteria inside directories in /path/to/logs/dir too. If you don't want to look recursively for the files, add the -maxdepth 1 option right before -type f.

For more details see man find.