One minor issue.  Delineation is done by spaces, so it breaks with filenames 
with spaces in the name.

Piping everything into a while loop like this prevents that.
 "ls. |head -10|while read file; do cp $file /destination/dir ; done"

Bigger chunks of code can be surrounded with curly braces before and after the 
pipe.

Vern Ceder <[email protected]> wrote:

>Oops, I see I have a typo in my one liner, should be:
>
>for x in `ls ./samples/*.bla | head -10`; do cp $x ; done
>
>Anyway my point is that one standard unixy way of getting the first x
>item is using head...
>
>Vern
>
>On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Vern Ceder <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I guess I would do it a little differently (with backticks):
>>
>> for x in `ls ./samples/*.bla | head -10`;
>> do
>>   cp $x (to wherever)
>> done
>>
>> or as a one liner:
>>
>> for x in `ls ./samples/*.bla | head -10`; don cp $x ; done
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Vern
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Christer Watson
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> a couple questions. don't you need to increment the $counter variable?
>>> Don't you need to use the $counter variable to choose just one item
>>> from a list of files in the /samples directory?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> --Christer
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:39 AM, Travis Paul <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> ye olden bash loops...
>>>>
>>>>          #!/bin/bash
>>>>          counter=0
>>>>          while [  $counter -lt 10 ]; do
>>>>              cp ./samples/*.bla
>>>>          done
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Jonathan Bartels
>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I have a large batch of sample data files that are run through an
>>>>> application by copying them to an 'inbox' directory. I would like to
>>>>> do something like this:
>>>>>
>>>>> cp ./samples/*.bla --limit 10
>>>>>
>>>>> So that only 10 of the sample files are copied instead of the whole
>>>>> mess of 10000. It can be any files. I checked the manpage and didn't
>>>>> see anything.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any ideas?
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> -----
>>>>> Jonathan Bartels
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Fwlug mailing list
>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>> http://fortwaynelug.org/mailman/listinfo/fwlug_fortwaynelug.org
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a public list and all posts are archived publicly. Please keep
>>>>> this in mind before posting.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> This is a public list and all posts are archived publicly. Please keep this 
>>> in mind before posting.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Vern Ceder
>> [email protected], [email protected]
>> The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Vern Ceder
>[email protected], [email protected]
>The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW
>
>_______________________________________________
>Fwlug mailing list
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>
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>mind before posting.
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