Hi I'm trying to copy my rails_projects directory from haseebjaved/Desktop/rails_projects to my home directory, which is haseebjaved.
How can I do this via the Command Line?
Also, can I see my home directory on the UI or only via the Command Line in Mac OS X?
Is it possible to copy directories to and from my home directory via the UI? Or only via Command Line?
Thank you
Is there something special with that directory or are you really just asking how to copy directories?
Copy recursively via CLI:
cp -R <sourcedir> <destdir>
If you're only seeing the files under the sourcedir being copied (instead of sourcedir as well), that's happening because you kept the trailing slash for sourcedir:
cp -R <sourcedir>/ <destdir>
The above only copies the files and their directories inside of sourcedir. Typically, you want to include the directory you're copying, so drop the trailing slash:
cp -R <sourcedir> <destdir>
tl;dr
cp -R "/src/project 1/App" "/src/project 2"
Explanation:
Using quotes will cater for spaces in the directory names
cp -R "/src/project 1/App" "/src/project 2"
If the App directory is specified in the destination directory:
cp -R "/src/project 1/App" "/src/project 2/App"
and "/src/project 2/App" already exists the result will be "/src/project 2/App/App"
Best not to specify the directory copied in the destination so that the command can be repeated over and over with the expected result.
Inside a bash script:
cp -R "${1}/App" "${2}"
Related
I have folder structure like this:
/home/
/folder1/
/backup/
/folder2/
/backup/
/folder3/
/folder4/
/backup/
/folder5/
(As you can see, no all directories "folder" have a directory "backup")
I need to copy the script "checker.php" to all "backup" directories only.
"checker.php" is at:
/home/checker.php
I am using this command:
cp /home/checker.php /home/*/backup/checker.php
But it is not working. Please help.
The cp command doesn't allow multiple destination directories.
A way forward is to loop through the folders:
for d in /home/*/backup; do
cp /home/checker.php "$d"
done
I can't find the answer to this for the life of me. Because I am packaging a zip in a specific way for a build process, I don't want to include a folder at all in the resulting zip at the root. For example, if I have this file path:
MyFolder/
A.png
B.txt
C.mp3
And I use either the command:
zip -r -X "MyFolder.zip" MyFolder/*
or
cd MyFolder; zip -r -X "../MyFolder.zip" *
I end up with a zip file that has the root element of MyFolder. What I want is for when I unzip it is to dump all of it right into the directory, like this:
A.png
B.txt
C.mp3
In other words, I don't want MyFolder or any other folder as the root. I read through the whole manual and have tried numerous options and a lot of Google searching, and zip seems to just really want to have a folder at the root.
Thanks!
It was Archive Utility's fault (a Mac OS X unzipper app). When I used the unzip command from the command line, it works great.
(cd MyFolder && zip -r -X "../MyFolder.zip" .)
Stumbled across this answer but didnt want to have to change in out of directories. I found the -j option useful which adds all files to the root of the zip. Note that its is all files so subdirectory structure will not be preserved.
So with this folder structure:
MyFolder
- MyFile1
- MySubFolder
- MyFile2
And this command:
zip -rj MyFolder.zip MyFolder
You get this:
MyFolder.zip
- MyFile1
- MyFile2
I found the easier way to make an encrypted zip file with the terminal app on mac (mac os) just from the files of your folder.
The command for the terminal
zip -j -e wishedname.zip yourfolder/*
That's it. Enjoy!
*
For more information to zip command in the terminal app
man zip
What -j and -e do?
-j
--junk-paths
Store just the name of a saved file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. By default, zip will store the full path (relative to the current directory).
-e
--encrypt
Encrypt the contents of the zip archive using a password which is entered on the terminal in response to a prompt (this will not be echoed; if standard error is not a tty, zip will exit with an error). The password prompt is repeated to save the user from typing errors.
Install zip
sudo apt install zip
use zip
zip -r foo.zip .
You can use the flags -0 (none) to -9 (best) to change compressionrate
Excluding files can be done via the -x flag. From the man-page:
-x files
--exclude files
Explicitly exclude the specified files, as in:
zip -r foo foo -x \*.o
which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that end in .o. The backslash avoids the shell filename substitution, so that the name matching
is performed by zip at all directory levels.
Also possible:
zip -r foo foo -x#exclude.lst
which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that match the patterns in the file exclude.lst.
The long option forms of the above are
zip -r foo foo --exclude \*.o
and
zip -r foo foo --exclude #exclude.lst
Multiple patterns can be specified, as in:
zip -r foo foo -x \*.o \*.c
If there is no space between -x and the pattern, just one value is assumed (no list):
zip -r foo foo -x\*.o
See -i for more on include and exclude.
I'm trying to make a simple script that copies all of my $HOME into another folder in $HOME called Backup/. This includes all hidden files and folders, and excludes Backup/ itself. What I have right now for the copying part is the following:
shopt -s dotglob
for file in $HOME/*
do
cp -r $file $HOME/Backup/
done
Bash tells me that it cannot copy Backup/ into itself. However, when I check the contents of $HOME/Backup/ I see that $HOME/Backup/Backup/ exists.
The copy of Backup/ in itself is useless. How can I get bash to copy over all the folders except Backup/. I tried using extglob and using cp -r $HOME/!(Backup)/ but it didn't copy over the hidden files that I need.
try rsync. you can exclude file/directories .
this is a good reference
http://www.maclife.com/article/columns/terminal_101_using_rsync_locally
Hugo,
A script like this is good, but you could try this:
cp -r * Backup/;
cp -r .* Backup/;
Another tool used with backups is tar. This compresses your backup to save disk space.
Also note, the * does not cover . hidden files.
I agree that using rsync would be a better solution, but there is an easy way to skip a directory in bash:
for file in "$HOME/"*
do
[[ $file = $HOME/Backup ]] && continue
cp -r "$file" "$HOME/Backup/"
done
This doesn't answer your question directly (the other answers already did that), but try cp -ua when you want to use cp to make a backup. This recurses directories, copies rather than follows links, preserves permissions and only copies a file if it is newer than the copy at the destination.
I have a rm command which clears all the files in a particular directory.
#!/usr/bin/ksh
cd /asd/ded/ses/ddd/rty/leg/
rm *.sas7bdat
rm p_bt*
Unfortunately it clears all the files under this directory, but now I just want it to clear in "parent directory" i.e. "/asd/ded/ses/ddd/rty/leg/" and not in "/asd/ded/ses/ddd/rty/leg/21_11" which is the child directory inside it.
I know level rm is possible in bash. Does it change for KSH and if yes then how.
LonelySoul,
Chepner is correct. The default for 'rm' in ksh is to only remove the files in the current directory. You can remove files from the lower directories (recursively) by adding the '-r' option.
If you are observing different behavior, you may have an alias setup somewhere in your profile. Try entering 'whence rm' to see if there is an alias that is causing you unexpected behavior.
Examples.
>pwd
/tmp
>touch abc.txt
>mkdir ced
>touch ced/abc.txt
>rm abc.txt (will remove abc.txt in /tmp, but leave the file in directory ced.
>whence rm
rm -f
In bash I need to do this:
take all files in a directory
copy them into an existing directory
How do I do this? I tried cp -r t1 t2 (both t1 and t2 are existing directories, t1 has files in it) but it created a directory called t1 inside t2, I don't want that, I need the files in t1 to go directly inside t2. How do I do this?
What you want is:
cp -R t1/. t2/
The dot at the end tells it to copy the contents of the current directory, not the directory itself. This method also includes hidden files and folders.
cp dir1/* dir2
Or if you have directories inside dir1 that you'd want to copy as well
cp -r dir1/* dir2
If you want to copy something from one directory into the current directory, do this:
cp dir1/* .
This assumes you're not trying to copy hidden files.
Assuming t1 is the folder with files in it, and t2 is the empty directory. What you want is something like this:
sudo cp -R t1/* t2/
Bear in mind, for the first example, t1 and t2 have to be the full paths, or relative paths (based on where you are). If you want, you can navigate to the empty folder (t2) and do this:
sudo cp -R t1/* ./
Or you can navigate to the folder with files (t1) and do this:
sudo cp -R ./* t2/
Note: The * sign (or wildcard) stands for all files and folders. The -R flag means recursively (everything inside everything).
cp -R t1/ t2
The trailing slash on the source directory changes the semantics slightly, so it copies the contents but not the directory itself. It also avoids the problems with globbing and invisible files that Bertrand's answer has (copying t1/* misses invisible files, copying `t1/* t1/.*' copies t1/. and t1/.., which you don't want).
For inside some directory, this will be use full as it copy all contents from "folder1" to new directory "folder2" inside some directory.
$(pwd) will get path for current directory.
Notice the dot (.) after folder1 to get all contents inside folder1
cp -r $(pwd)/folder1/. $(pwd)/folder2
Nov, 2021 Update:
This code with Flag "-R" copies perfectly all the contents of "folder1" to existing "folder2":
cp -R folder1/. folder2
Flag "-R" copies symbolic links as well but Flag "-r" skips symbolic links so Flag "-R" is better than Flag "-r".
The latest GNU Grep 3.7:
-R, --dereference-recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory,
recursively, following all symbolic links.
-r, --recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory,
recursively. Follow symbolic links on the command line, but skip symlinks
that are encountered recursively. Note that if no file operand is given,
grep searches the working directory. This is the same as the
‘--directories=recurse’ option.
Depending on some details you might need to do something like this:
r=$(pwd)
case "$TARG" in
/*) p=$r;;
*) p="";;
esac
cd "$SRC" && cp -r . "$p/$TARG"
cd "$r"
... this basically changes to the SRC directory and copies it to the target, then returns back to whence ever you started.
The extra fussing is to handle relative or absolute targets.
(This doesn't rely on subtle semantics of the cp command itself ... about how it handles source specifications with or without a trailing / ... since I'm not sure those are stable, portable, and reliable beyond just GNU cp and I don't know if they'll continue to be so in the future).
the correct option should be -T. used with -r to copy recursively.
$ cp -r -T t1 t2