Copy a Directory from Command Line

By  on  

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!

Recent Features

  • By
    Regular Expressions for the Rest of Us

    Sooner or later you'll run across a regular expression. With their cryptic syntax, confusing documentation and massive learning curve, most developers settle for copying and pasting them from StackOverflow and hoping they work. But what if you could decode regular expressions and harness their power? In...

  • By
    How to Create a RetroPie on Raspberry Pi – Graphical Guide

    Today we get to play amazing games on our super powered game consoles, PCs, VR headsets, and even mobile devices.  While I enjoy playing new games these days, I do long for the retro gaming systems I had when I was a kid: the original Nintendo...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Font Replacement Using Cufón

    We all know about the big font replacement methods. sIFR's big. Image font replacement has gained some steam. Not too many people know about a great project named Cufón though. Cufón uses a unique blend of a proprietary font generator tool...

  • By
    Fading Links Using jQuery:  dwFadingLinks

    UPDATE: The jQuery website was down today which caused some issues with my example. I've made everything local and now the example works. Earlier this week, I posted a MooTools script that faded links to and from a color during the mouseover and mouseout events.

Discussion

  1. Why do you have the -s flag in there? Looking at the --help for cp, 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 -R flag). (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.

  2. Another great option that I somehow always forget to use is -a (archive), used like so:

    cp -a source source_copy

    It copies structure and permissions and also preserves symlinks.

  3. Just use rsync, faster and more options. )

  4. Good to know. But I agree with @John

  5. I prefer to use rsync for this purpose

    rsync -rav ./source/ ./destination/

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!