How to copy a hidden directory recursively and preserving its permissions

command linecpfiles

mkdir backupcache    
cp -rp .cache backupcache # or cp -rp \.cache backupcache does not work

nothing gets copied and directory backupcache remains empty

Best Answer

Don't specify the files or Directory

Lets say you created the new folder (or are going to create one) and want to copy the files to it after the folder is created

mkdir /test/folder
cp -rp /path/to/copy/. /test/folder

This will copy all files/folder recursively from /path/from/copy in to the already existing folder created on the first line.

Another approach is tar. For example:

$cd foo
$tar cf - . | tar -C /path/to/bar -x

Using rsync :

rsync -av src dest

Related Solutions

Linux Copy Command – Copy Recursively Except Hidden Directory

You could just copy everything with

cp -rf

and then delete hidden directories at the destination with

find -type d -name '.*' -and -not -name '.' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

Alternatively, if you have some advanced tar (e.g. GNU tar), you could try to use tar to exclude some patterns. But I am afraid that is not possible to only exclude hidden directories, but include hidden files.

For example something like this:

tar --exclude=PATTERN -f - -c * | tar -C destination -f - -x

Btw, GNU tar has a zoo of exclude style options. My favourite is

--exclude-vcs

Shell – Recursively delete hidden directory & its files

It sounds like you want something like this (although it's not clear what you mean when distinguishing "iterative command" from "recursive command", since rm -rf is both recursive and iterative):

find . -type d -name '.[^.]*' -prune -exec echo rm -rf {} +

Once you're happy, remove echo from the option arguments to -exec to remove the listed directories.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux Copy Command – Copy Recursively Except Hidden Directory

Shell – Recursively delete hidden directory & its files

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