copying all file
Hey,
I wanted to copy all all files from one directory to another, like this:
cp -i /source/. /destination
I knew the source had no subdirectories and I wanted a prompt if files needed to be overwritten.
Now, this didnt work got the error " -r not specified, omitting directory /source/"
It worked with -r. I dont understand why though, there wre
Cheers,
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I'm not sure if you're looking for a better way to do this, or just an explanation about why it doesn't work.
A simple way to accomplish what you want is to use
*instead of.. At the end of your source directory.As for why you're seeing the behavior you're seeing... Hopefully someone can help clear this up for me, because I got a bit confused while looking into it.
The simple explanation would be that
.represents a directory, and cp will not copy any directories without the-roption. That being said,cpdoesn't really seem to handle it as a directory. This seems to be because the trailing.character isn't expanded by the shell, and is instead interpreted bycpinternally.The way cp handles it is... weird. It seems like kind of a special case. Practically it can be used to specify hidden files in a recursive copy.
cp -r /source/. /destinationwill copy all files in the source directory including hidden files.cp -r /source/* /destinationwill copy all files in the source directory excluding hidden files. In both cases the directory itself isn't copied, just the contents.In the example above the
.does not seem to represent a directory. It behaves more like a special wildcard character that includes hidden files. That would indicate thatcpdoesn't consider it a directory, and so-rshould not be required... I don't really understand WHY it behaves that way and I can't seem to find any good explanation for it anywhere.So good question. I'm stumped. Hopefully someone else can elaborate.
No, it behaves exactly like any other directory.
Let's say you had these files:
and you wanted to copy these into the directory:
If you ran:
cpwould:Recognise that
/source/diris a directory and create the corresponding/destination/dirdirectory, if it does not already exist.Copy the
a,band.hiddenfiles into this/destination/dirdirectory.Now replace
dirwith.:Now
cpwould:Recognise that
/source/.is a directory and create the corresponding/destination/.directory, if it does not already exist.Copy the
a,band.hiddenfiles into this/destination/.directory.The key here is that the first step wouldn't actually create a new directory, since
/destination/.does already exist. The end result is thata,band.hiddenwould appear inside/destination.Edit: If you want to use
cpto safely recursively copy directories, a better way (at least with GNUcp) is:The
-Toption (aka--no-target-directory) ensures that the command will work correctly even if the/destinationdirectory does not exist. The trailing slash on/source/ensures that the command will fail if for some reason the source is not a directory, and the trailing slash on/destination/is effectively irrelevant (but I like it for symmetry).It is early and with one eye open look into “rsync”.
there's another way around, if you want to omit -r:
shopt -s dotglobsthis will set the * to also match all dotfiles and dotdirs except '.' and '..' untill you log out
cp dir/* /path/to/dest/Rsync is just what u need