[SOLVED] Copying files and their entire directory structure

lucmove · 07-08-2017, 05:31 PM

Assuming something like this:

/usr/bin
/usr/bin/ffmpeg
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg
/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/ffmpeg/copyright
/usr/share/ffmpeg
/usr/share/ffmpeg/examples
/usr/share/ffmpeg/examples/Makefile

I want to copy everything, files and entire structures, but not the entire content of directories. I just want the directories and the files that are listed, specifically.

How?

astrogeek · 07-08-2017, 06:02 PM

One easy way with an arbitrary list of files (i.e. not a patterend selection) would be to copy the target files using cp with the --parents option.

Code:

cp --parents /usr/bin/ffmpeg \
more_files_here...  destination/

See man cp as always.

lucmove · 07-08-2017, 06:08 PM

Yes, that worked. Thank you.

astrogeek · 07-08-2017, 06:22 PM

Glad to help.

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Habitual · 07-08-2017, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucmove

Yes, that worked. Thank you.

man cp has worked for years.

lucmove · 07-08-2017, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Habitual

man cp has worked for years.

Well, that was quite unexpected to me. I expected to find it in 'man rsync' but I didn't, so...

NevemTeve · 07-09-2017, 06:40 AM

It might be a GNU-extension. With standard tools:

Code:

(cd from; tar -cf - filelistwithrelativepath)|\
(cd to; tar -xf -)