[plug] Recursive Copying of Folder Contents

[Bernd Felsche]

Gregory Orange <gregory.orange at rpsmetocean.com> wrote:
>Andrew Furey wrote:
>> On 04/06/2009, Jason Posavec <jasonposavec at iinet.net.au> wrote:

>>>> $ cp Music/*/*/*  common-folder /
>>>  That would only copy files, and not folders? If so, it proves that the best
>>> solutions are always the simplest and most elegant. At first glance, that
>>> command looks like it would copy *everything* in the 3 folders under Music,
>>> not just the files.
>> 
>> Actually it'll copy everything in the-3-folders-under-Music, not the
>> ones in the levels above. You're thinking of:
>> 
>> $ cp Music/* Music/*/* Music/*/*/* common-folder

>The find a la BillK will work elegantly, rather than munging together 
>args to cp that might miss some. It might not be super high performance, 
>and I've heard xargs can help there. I wouldn't bother though, clock 
>cycles are cheap (:

find Music/*/*/* -print0 | cpio -pdm0 common-folder

Would copy the tree.

The print0 and ZERO options specify null-termination of filenames.
Else embedded field and record separators confuddle the copier.
-- 
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