Re: cp sucks or do I not know enough?

[Jason Martens <me@jasonmartens.com>]

Anil Gupte wrote:
> I have read man cp and cp --help (same thing), but I cannot figure out 
> how to shorten this:
>  
> cp --reply=yes /foo/* .
I think you want -i

>  
> No -u does not work as expected and nor does -f
>  
> Also, is there an equivalent of xcopy and I mean all the features.  
> For example, in Dos/Win I am used to using, say:
>  
> xcopy /s/e/d/y \foo\*.xyz \boo
>  
> and sometimes
>  
> xcopy /s/e/d/y/l  \foo\*.xyz \boo
>  
> (the /l gives me a list of files that would be copied without actually 
> copying them).  Basically I would like to copy the entire directory 
> structure.
I don't know anything about xcopy, but to copy an entire directory 
structure you can use cp -r (recursive).  You can use ls to see a list 
of all the files you are going to copy, then replace it with cp to 
actually do the copy. Example:

ls /foo/*.xyz      # To see the files it will select
cp /foo/*.xyz /boo

Also, make sure to use the forwardslash "/" instead of the backslash "\" 
in unix/linux environments.

Jason Martens