cp command can't do "dotfiles"
 

This was a real frustration... To copy "dotfiles" like .bashrc with the "cp -R" command, you'd have to do "cp -R ./.* *", yet it'd try to copy ".." and "." in each directory, which doesn't work right. You could do a -R cp of regular files, then do an ls -a and some basename wizardry to copy "dotfiles" afterwards, but it wouldn't do dot directories (directories that start with dot).

After a while, I figured out I can do:

tar --exclude='.' --exclude='..' -cvf server-bak-2005-03-31.tar /mnt/tmphd/* /mnt/tmphd/.*

Finally, someone told me to do...

cp -R /mnt/tmphd/* /mnt/tmphd/.??* .

Still, I don't get why cp doesn't have a parameter to say "include dotfiles" and a parameter to say "include dotdirectories".

Should cp be modified to include this? If there is some secret hidden way, shouldn't it be better documented?

hi,
what is your intention...backup?

tar -cvzhf <dest.> <src.> should do

That tar command doesn't look right. The last parameter listed as <dest.> would actually be the list of files to include in the archive.

You can use tar to copy files from one directory to another like this

cd <source dir>; tar cf - . | ( cd <dest dir> ; tar xf - )

I got this from the tar info pages. I'm working off of memory, so please double check it. I don't know if tar called like this will indeed pickup the hidden files/directories in the current directory.

Also double check if 'cp . <destination_dir> does not pick up hidden files. I think that the rational is that since these are hidden files, a user probably is only trying to copy files that they can see in a directory listing. Otherwise a person might be copying files that they are not aware of, which might include harmful files left by a hacker ( make that cracker ). Or perhaps a very large core file.

works on my box.
tar -cvzhf backup.tar.gz /yourfolder.with.hiddenfiles

hmm? not in my case....

You could always do something like this:

cp \.??*

Which copies any file which begins with a . and has at least 2 other characters ( this eliminates the .. problem.)

Or:

for i in `find . -type f`;do cp $i /new/path/ ;done

<edit> Always quote your variables in case of spaces in filenames.

for i in `find . -type f`;do cp "$i" /new/path/ ;done