Need a script to search for all word documents on hard drive

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I am in need of a script to search for all Microsoft word documents on a laptop hard drive and save a duplicate to a backup folder. I am aware of some apps that will do this but I am in a college setting and we can not afford shareware products. Thanks for any help. Using Panther.

#2

This one is very quick, but it will overwrite documents with the same name:

set backupFolder to POSIX path of alias "disk:Users:john:Desktop:backup:"
do shell script "find / -name '*.doc' -exec echo 'cp "{}" "" & backupFolder & ""' \; | sh"

Or, to rename sequentially files with the same name, you can use this UNTESTED CODE:

global backupFolder

set backupFolder to POSIX path of alias "disk:Users:joe:Desktop:backup:"
set allDocs to (do shell script "find / -name '*.doc'")

set x to 1
repeat
	try
		my backupFile(allDocs's paragraph x)
		set x to x + 1
	on error --> no more stuff
		exit repeat
	end try
end repeat

to backupFile(f)
	set fname to text 1 thru -5 of getName(f)
	set increaseNumber to ""
	repeat
		try
			alias ((backupFolder & fname & increaseNumber & ".doc") as POSIX file as text)
			--> such file already exists, so...
			set increaseNumber to increaseNumber + 1
		on error --> such file doesn't exist
			exit repeat
		end try
	end repeat
	do shell script "cp " & quoted form of f & space & quoted form of (backupFolder & fname & increaseNumber & ".doc")
end backupFile
to getName(f)
	set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "/"
	set fname to item -1 of f's text items
	set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}
	fname
end getName