Create path when copying a file in linux

Question

I know there is a thread on this site for creating a directory when using cp but my question is a little different. I want to copy a file in a new destination in linux, but some part of the path might not exist and I wanted to know whether it is possible to create that path without separating directory name from file name, for example, imagine I have a variable that contains the prefix for new files $prefixdir and I want every file to be copied in that location.

prefixdir=/home/akj/newpath
list="$(ls /somelocation...)"
for l in $list
do
   cp -v $l "$prefixdir$l"
done

From the example it is obvious that there can be some directories that don't exist under new location and because of file names I can't use mkdir "$prefixdir$l". I know I can separate file name from directory name and then use mkdir but I was wondering if there were an elegant way to do that.

EDIT:

To just clarify my question imagine I want to copy /lib/tt/test.so and my $prefixdir is /home/akj/. Also imagine that lib/tt doesn't exist, so my cp command would fail. I also can't use mkdir -p because of test.so in the path.

Thanks.

@JuliusDavies, that's the right idea, but quotes are required around the variables. — glenn jackman, Oct 02 '15 at 18:30
@akj88, [don't parse `ls`](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs), any filenames with spaces will cause the for-loop to split the filenames. You want `for file in /somelocation/.../*; do` — glenn jackman, Oct 02 '15 at 18:32
@glenn jackman Thanks, I won't, but that is just to explain my problem. — AKJ88, Oct 02 '15 at 18:34
Julius has your answer: `mkdir -p "$(dirname "$prefixdir$l")" && cp ...` — glenn jackman, Oct 02 '15 at 18:40
You are looking for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1529946/linux-copy-and-create-destination-dir-if-it-does-not-exist — James Jithin, Oct 02 '15 at 18:41
@glenn jackman Sorry I just read the first answer, now I read others an found the solution, also the one Julius Davies mentioned. — AKJ88, Oct 02 '15 at 18:46

rici · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-02T18:47:57.063

If you have Gnu coreutils (normally you will on linux), you can use:

install -m 0644 -D source_file dest_filename

which automatically creates necessary directories.

The -m 0644 flag sets the permissions of the new file to 0644 (rw-r--r--); you need that because the default is to set the permissions to rxwr-xr-x (on the assumption that the file should be executable, since that's the usual use case) rather than copying the permissions of the original file.

Create path when copying a file in linux

1 Answers1