Re: Help with command - cp
Sorry for sending this off-list, Gord. Resending to where it ought to
have gone in the first place.
On Sunday 26 January 2014 15:09:10 ghaverla wrote:
> Your requirement (to skip hidden files and directories) is what is
> usually required.
>
> But, as a generic rule, you can use the echo command to help with
> analysing how the command line shell might expand a wild card.
>
> echo cp /path/to/src/* /path/to/dest > some_tmp_file
>
> If I do this on my home directory, I could a huge list as I have
> too many files. Which is why I redirected the output to a file.
> And looking in the file, I find that there are no hidden
> directories or files copied.
>
> If we look at your command line, you have two switches -R and -p.
> The -R turns on recursive copying, not only is every file
> in .../sourcedir/A copied, every subdirectory of .../sourcedir/A,
> and subdirectories of those, to the end of the file tree is copied.
> The -p switch asks for the preservation of metadata: ownership,
> groupship, and times.
>
> If you are the owner of the files under sourcedir/A and you are
> also the owner of destinationdir/B, I would expect the ownership
> and groupship to already be proper, and so it is only the file time
> information which is being preserved. Preserve is important if
> root is doing the copying.
Thank you very much, Gord. Most helpful. I hadn't thought of using
echo like that. I obviously need to work on my lateral thinking. :-(
Lisi
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