cp dir recursivly excluding 2 subdirs

Question

I have 1 directory with 9 subdirectories and 10 files. Subdirectory have next level subdirectories and files.

/home/directory/
/home/directory/subdirectory1
/home/directory/subdirectory2
...
/home/directory/subdirectory9
/home/directory/file1
...
/home/directory/file10

I want to copy all subdirectories and files recursivly excluding:

/home/directory/subdirectory5
/home/directory/subdirectory7

What is the best way for it?

first copy complete folder recursively,then use rm command to remove subfolders 5 & 7 — Pradeep, Feb 27 '12 at 12:39
possible duplicate of [Copy folder recursively, excluding some folders](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2193584/copy-folder-recursively-excluding-some-folders) — Oleg Estekhin, Jun 27 '14 at 08:06

score 30 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 12:17

30

rsync -avz --exclude subdirectory5 --exclude subdirectory7 /home/directory/ target-path

answered Aug 22 '12 at 12:17

kjohri

1,166
11
10

1

rsync is the way to go. forget about cp – thebugfinder Aug 28 '15 at 07:55

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 27 '12 at 12:11

11

I don't know a good way of doing it with cp, but it's fairly easy using rsync and the --exclude switch.

answered Feb 27 '12 at 12:11

aioobe

413,195
112
811
826

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 27 '12 at 12:51

8

Maybe the find command will help you:

$ find /home/directory -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name 'subdirectory[57]' -or -exec cp -r {} /path/to/dir \;

edited Feb 27 '12 at 12:51

tchrist

78,834
30
123
180

answered Feb 27 '12 at 12:34

kev

155,172
47
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1

this doesn't preserve the directory tree structure, @kjohri 's answer with rsync is much better – arod Mar 17 '15 at 19:06
this command is not even working for me, it says -exec is missing a parameter – zozelfelfo Jan 17 '17 at 12:28

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 27 '12 at 18:40

2

use rsync with --exclude is better

answered Feb 27 '12 at 18:40

Qian

1,007
7
6

rsync is a better approach. – Mingjiang Shi May 22 '13 at 06:12

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 27 '12 at 21:06

2

You can use the --exclude option of tar:

{ cd /home/directory; tar -c --exclude=subdirectory5 --exclude=subdirectory7 .; } | { cd _destination_ ; tar -x; }

answered Feb 27 '12 at 21:06

jfg956

16,077
4
26
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score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 05 '12 at 12:13

1

Why not just use the cp command like this:

cp -r /home/directory/!(subdirectory5|subdirectory7) /destination

edited Oct 05 '12 at 12:13

Sumit Singh

15,743
6
59
89

answered Aug 22 '12 at 07:38

Morten Pedersen

29
1

2

Not working in bash! the output is "bash: !: event not found" – Mingjiang Shi May 03 '13 at 01:53
1

In this case you should set call: **shopt -s extglob** and **mkdir destination**. Then it will work. – shadox Sep 22 '14 at 10:55

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 27 '12 at 12:47

Kev's way is better, but this would also work:

find "/home/folder" -maxdepth 1 | sed -e "/^\/home\/folder$/d" -e "/^\/home\/folder\/subfolder5$/d" -e "/^\/home\/folder\/subfolder7$/d" -e "s/^/cp \-r /" -e  "s/$/ \/home\/target/" | cat

Explained :

find "/home/folder" -maxdepth 1 |
// get all files and dirs under /home/folder, pipe output

sed -e "/^\/home\/folder$/d" 
// have sed strip the path being searched, or the cp -r we prepend later will pickup the excluded dirs again.

-e "/^\/home\/folder\/subfolder5$/d"
// have sed strip subfolder5

-e "/^\/home\/folder\/subfolder7$/d"
// have sed strip subfolder7

-e "s/^/cp \-r /"
// have sed prepend "cp -r " to each line

-e  "s/$/ \/home\/target/" | cat
// have sed append targetdir to each line.

Outputs:

cp -r /home/folder/subfolder9 /home/target
cp -r /home/folder/subfolder1 /home/target
cp -r /home/folder/file10 /home/target
cp -r /home/folder/subfolder2 /home/target
cp -r /home/folder/file1 /home/target
cp -r /home/folder/subfolder3 /home/target

Change | cat to | sh to execute the command.

You should Kev's solution is better

+1 for overcomplicated sed piped to cat or sh- best way to build other complex scripts. +1 for Kev's right answer in this case :) — David Souther, Feb 27 '12 at 13:31

cp dir recursivly excluding 2 subdirs

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