Copy a Directory from Command Line
Copying a directory for the sake of backup is something I do often, especially when I'm trying to figure out why something isn't working when I use an external library. I'll copy the directory structure as a backup, mess around with the original source until I find a solution, then restore the original and change my overall system code to bring in my revised version.
You can't just use cp to copy a directory structure -- you'll see cp: myDir is a directory (not copied). You'll need to add a few additional flags to copy a directory structure:
cp -Rp source source_copy
The above command copies the directory recursively while keeping the same permissions!
![6 Things You Didn’t Know About Firefox OS]()
Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason: Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...
![7 Essential JavaScript Functions]()
I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener and attachEvent. Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...
![Retrieve Google Analytics Visits and PageViews with PHP]()
Google Analytics is an outstanding website analytics tool that gives you way more information about your website than you probably need. Better to get more than you want than not enough, right? Anyways I check my website statistics more often than I should and...
![Drag and Drop MooTools File Uploads]()
Honesty hour confession: file uploading within the web browser sucks. It just does. Like the ugly SELECT element, the file input is almost unstylable and looks different on different platforms. Add to those criticism the fact that we're all used to drag and drop operations...
Why do you have the
-sflag in there? Looking at the--helpforcp, that’s the option to “make symbolic links instead of copying”, and according to Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1240636 , that doesn’t even work recursively (with the-Rflag). (Nor can I see why you would want to copy an entire directory recursively only for it to be populated with symlinks, especially “for the sake of backup”.) Typo?EDIT: David has since corrected the error in question.
Another great option that I somehow always forget to use is -a (archive), used like so:
It copies structure and permissions and also preserves symlinks.
Just use rsync, faster and more options. )
Good to know. But I agree with @John
I prefer to use rsync for this purpose