Linux – How to copy a single file and maintain directory structure

file managementlinux

How can I do this on the command line?

e.g. copy /dir/another/file to /tmp/ so I have /tmp/dir/another/file

cp --parents /dir/another/file /tmp

will do exactly what you want.

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type d -exec mkdir -p ~/to/{} \;

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type f -exec ln -s ~/from/{} ~/to/{} \;

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type f -exec touch ~/to/{} \;

You can use find and cpio to do this

cd /top/level/to/copy
find . -name '*.txt' | cpio -pdm /path/to/destdir

(-updm for overwrite destination content.)