Copying a directory+renaming it

I want to copy a directory from:

path1/dir1

path2/dir2

the first time I invoke

cp -r path1/dir1 path2/dir2

there's no problem, dir2 is created under path2

ls path2/dir2

bu the 2nd time, dir1 is created under path2/dir2

ls path2/dir2/dir1

Can I get the correct behavior using only cp ? (= without invoking rm -f path2/dir2 )

Best Answer

Use the -T option to cp (GNU cp):

cp -rT path2/dir2 path1/dir1

If you use rsync for this (which is probably what you want since it will avoid copying files which haven't changed), you can append a / to the source directory so that specifically the contents are copied rather than the directory itself. Eg:

rsync -r path1/dir1/ path2/dir2

cp won't work

Your example as it stands will not work because copy doesn't copy directory structures, it will only copy the files, hence the error message you're encountering. To do a deep copy such as this you can enlist either the tar command and use the construct tar cvf - --files-from=... | (cd /home/tmp/test/files/; tar xvf -) or you can just use rsync.

rsync

If I were you I'd use rsync to do this like so:

$ rsync -avz --files-from=abc.txt /src /home/tmp/test/files/.

If you only want the 1st 100 lines from file abc.txt you can do this:

$ rsync -avz --files-from=<(head -n 100 abc.txt) /src /home/tmp/test/files/.

Example

Sample folder data:

$ tree /home/saml/tmp/folder*
/home/saml/tmp/folder1
`-- example.tar.gz
/home/saml/tmp/folder2
`-- example.tar.gz
/home/saml/tmp/folder3
`-- example.tar.gz

Now copy the files:

$ rsync -avz --files-from=<(head -n 3 /home/saml/tmp/abc.txt) \
         /home/saml/tmp/. /home/saml/tmp/test/files/.
building file list ... done
./
folder1/
folder1/example.tar.gz
folder2/
folder2/example.tar.gz
folder3/
folder3/example.tar.gz

sent 3147093 bytes  received 81 bytes  6294348.00 bytes/sec
total size is 3145728  speedup is 1.00

Confirm they were copied:

$ tree /home/saml/tmp/test/files
/home/saml/tmp/test/files
|-- folder1
|   `-- example.tar.gz
|-- folder2
|   `-- example.tar.gz
`-- folder3
    `-- example.tar.gz

tar

If you interested here's how you do it using just tar.

$ cd /home/saml/tmp
$ tar cvf - --files-from=<(head -n 3 /home/saml/tmp/abc.txt) | (cd /home/saml/tmp/test/files/; tar xvf -)
./folder1/example.tar.gz
./folder1/example.tar.gz
./folder2/example.tar.gz
./folder2/example.tar.gz
./folder3/example.tar.gz
./folder3/example.tar.gz

Confirm that it copied:

$ tree /home/saml/tmp/test/files
/home/saml/tmp/test/files
|-- folder1
|   `-- example.tar.gz
|-- folder2
|   `-- example.tar.gz
`-- folder3
    `-- example.tar.gz

Using cp to replace a directory of the same name

Use a dot . after a:

cp -a test/a/. a

It actually does not replace a as you though. It just copy test/a content to directory a.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Copying files from one directory to another

cp won't work

rsync

Example

tar

Using cp to replace a directory of the same name

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