check for matching files when comparing directories
 

hi,

I am making a shell script to back up one directory to another, how could i compare directories and inform myself if there are any matching files that will be over written

i've not tried it really, but i'd suggest that you might just want somethign as simple as "cp -uv" this will only overwrite old files, and presumably the verbose output will easily tell you which ones are over written. unless you require some sort of verification before it happens...

I think you would want to use the 'diff' command. Check out the man pages for its uses. If you are just using the 'cp' command then you can add the -i switch to be prompted before overwriting files. I'm not sure if thats what your looking for though.

thanks the cp -i works great