How to search a folder and all of its subfolders for files of a certain type

Question

I am trying to search for all files of a given type in a given folder and copy them to a new folder.

I need to specify a root folder and search through that folder a

Answer 1

If speed is a concern, prefer Dir.glob over Find.find.

Warming up --------------------------------------
           Find.find   124.000  i/100ms
            Dir.glob   515.000  i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
           Find.find      1.242k (± 4.7%) i/s -      6.200k in   5.001398s
            Dir.glob      5.249k (± 4.5%) i/s -     26.265k in   5.014632s

Comparison:
            Dir.glob:     5248.5 i/s
           Find.find:     1242.4 i/s - 4.22x slower

 

require 'find'
require 'benchmark/ips'

dir = '.'

Benchmark.ips do |x|
  x.report 'Find.find' do
    Find.find(dir).select { |f| f =~ /\*\.pdf/ }
  end

  x.report 'Dir.glob' do
    Dir.glob("#{dir}/**/*\.pdf")
  end

  x.compare!
end

Using ruby 2.2.2p95 (2015-04-13 revision 50295) [x86_64-darwin15]