I was hoping:
cp -R src/prog.js images/icon.jpg /tmp/package
would yield a symmetrical structure in the destination dir:
/tmp
|
+-- package
|
+-- src
| |
| +-- prog.js
|
+-- images
|
+-- icon.jpg
but instead, both of the files are copied into /tmp/package. A flat copy. (This is on OSX).
Is there a simple bash function I can use to copy all files, including files specified by wildcard (e.g. src/*.js) into their rightful place within the destination directory. A bit like "for each file, run mkdir -p $(dirname "$file"); cp "$file" $(dirname "$file")
", but perhaps a single command.
This is a relevant thread, which suggests it's not possible. The author's solution isn't so useful to me though, because I would like to simply provide a list of files, wildcard or not, and have all of them copied to the destination dir. IIRC MS-DOS xcopy does this, but there seems to be no equivalent for cp.
Have you tried using the --parents option? I don't know if OS X supports that, but that works on Linux.
cp --parents src/prog.js images/icon.jpg /tmp/package
If that doesn't work on OS X, try
rsync -R src/prog.js images/icon.jpg /tmp/package
as aif suggested.
One way:
tar cf - <files> | (cd /dest; tar xf -)
Alternatively, if you're old-school, use cpio:
cd /source;
find . -print | cpio -pvdmB /target
Clearly, you can filter the file list to your heart's content.
The '-p' option is for 'pass-through' mode (as against '-i' for input or '-o' for output). The '-v' is verbose (list the files as they're processed). The '-m' preserves modification times. The '-B' means use 'big blocks' (where big blocks are 5120 bytes instead of 512 bytes); it is possible it has no effect these days.
rsync's -R option will do what you expect. It's a very feature-rich file copier. For example:
$ rsync -Rv src/prog.js images/icon.jpg /tmp/package/
images/
images/icon.jpg
src/
src/prog.js
sent 197 bytes received 76 bytes 546.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00
Sample results:
$ find /tmp/package
/tmp/package
/tmp/package/images
/tmp/package/images/icon.jpg
/tmp/package/src
/tmp/package/src/prog.js
rsync of course!
tutorial here. and here
Or unison
Try...
for f in src/*.js; do cp $f /tmp/package/$f; done
so for what you were doing originally...
for f in `echo "src/prog.js images/icon.jpg"`; do cp $f /tmp/package/$f; done
or
v="src/prog.js images/icon.jpg"; for f in $v; do cp $f /tmp/package/$f; done