CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashfiledirectorycopycp
David Chang
David Chang

Reputation: 3191

Copy files from one directory into an existing directory

In bash I need to do this:

  1. take all files in a directory

  2. copy them into an existing directory

How do I do this? I tried cp -r t1 t2 (both t1 and t2 are existing directories, t1 has files in it) but it created a directory called t1 inside t2, I don't want that, I need the files in t1 to go directly inside t2. How do I do this?

Upvotes: 319

Views: 408962

Answers (10)

pmg7670
pmg7670

Reputation: 141

In my case, on ubuntu 20.04.6, bash did not accept my double-quoted command. Eg.

cp "$HOME/.local/lib/*" ./lib/

returned =>

$>cp: cannot stat '/home/user1/.local/lib/*': No such file or directory

The directory exists on my system, so it's probably interpreting the star literally. By removing the quotes, it worked. Here is a reference page about bash quoted variable interpretation

Upvotes: 1

Super Kai - Kazuya Ito
Super Kai - Kazuya Ito

Reputation: 1

Nov, 2021 Update:

This code with Flag "-R" copies perfectly all the contents of "folder1" to existing "folder2":

cp -R folder1/. folder2

Flag "-R" copies symbolic links as well but Flag "-r" skips symbolic links so Flag "-R" is better than Flag "-r".

  • The latest GNU Grep 3.7:
-R, --dereference-recursive

For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory, 
recursively, following all symbolic links.

-r, --recursive

For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory, 
recursively. Follow symbolic links on the command line, but skip symlinks 
that are encountered recursively. Note that if no file operand is given, 
grep searches the working directory. This is the same as the 
‘--directories=recurse’ option.

Upvotes: 6

yuanjianpeng
yuanjianpeng

Reputation: 427

the correct option should be -T. used with -r to copy recursively.

$ cp -r -T t1 t2

Upvotes: 0

6Aashis
6Aashis

Reputation: 306

For inside some directory, this will be use full as it copy all contents from "folder1" to new directory "folder2" inside some directory.

$(pwd) will get path for current directory.

Notice the dot (.) after folder1 to get all contents inside folder1

cp -r $(pwd)/folder1/. $(pwd)/folder2

Upvotes: 6

Konkret
Konkret

Reputation: 1021

Assuming t1 is the folder with files in it, and t2 is the empty directory. What you want is something like this:

sudo cp -R t1/* t2/

Bear in mind, for the first example, t1 and t2 have to be the full paths, or relative paths (based on where you are). If you want, you can navigate to the empty folder (t2) and do this:

sudo cp -R t1/* ./

Or you can navigate to the folder with files (t1) and do this:

sudo cp -R ./* t2/

Note: The * sign (or wildcard) stands for all files and folders. The -R flag means recursively (everything inside everything).

Upvotes: 8

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 11404

What you want is:

cp -R t1/. t2/

The dot at the end tells it to copy the contents of the current directory, not the directory itself. This method also includes hidden files and folders.

Upvotes: 504

Karl Giesing
Karl Giesing

Reputation: 1654

If you want to copy something from one directory into the current directory, do this:

cp dir1/* .

This assumes you're not trying to copy hidden files.

Upvotes: 36

Jim Dennis
Jim Dennis

Reputation: 17530

Depending on some details you might need to do something like this:

r=$(pwd)
case "$TARG" in
    /*) p=$r;;
    *) p="";;
    esac
cd "$SRC" && cp -r . "$p/$TARG"
cd "$r"

... this basically changes to the SRC directory and copies it to the target, then returns back to whence ever you started.

The extra fussing is to handle relative or absolute targets.

(This doesn't rely on subtle semantics of the cp command itself ... about how it handles source specifications with or without a trailing / ... since I'm not sure those are stable, portable, and reliable beyond just GNU cp and I don't know if they'll continue to be so in the future).

Upvotes: 2

Gordon Davisson
Gordon Davisson

Reputation: 126108

cp -R t1/ t2

The trailing slash on the source directory changes the semantics slightly, so it copies the contents but not the directory itself. It also avoids the problems with globbing and invisible files that Bertrand's answer has (copying t1/* misses invisible files, copying `t1/* t1/.*' copies t1/. and t1/.., which you don't want).

Upvotes: 6

Bertrand Marron
Bertrand Marron

Reputation: 22220

cp dir1/* dir2

Or if you have directories inside dir1 that you'd want to copy as well

cp -r dir1/* dir2

Upvotes: 49

Related Questions