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Full Discussion: cp -R behaviour
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting cp -R behaviour Post 302278411 by aegis on Tuesday 20th of January 2009 07:11:24 AM
Old 01-20-2009
cp -R behaviour
i 've noticed the following difference between freebsd cp and gnu cp

from the freebsd cp man page:

Code:
     -R    ... If the source_file ends in a /, the contents of the directory are copied rather than
       the directory itself. ...
on gnu cp from the man page

while on gnu cp manpage:

Code:
‘-r' ‘--recursive'

Copy directories recursively. Symbolic links are not
followed by default; see the --archive (-a), -d, --dereference (-L),
     --no-dereference (-P), and -H options. Special files are copied by
     creating a destination file of the same type as the source; see the
     --copy-contents option. It is not portable to use -r to copy symbolic
     links or special files. On some non-gnu systems, -r implies the
     equivalent of -L and --copy-contents for historical reasons. Also, it
     is not portable to use -R to copy symbolic links unless you also
     specify -P, as POSIX allows implementations that dereference symbolic
     links by default.

the difference above creates problems when one wants to copy all files from a directory to another directory, without copying
the directory itself.

for example what i want to do is copy some files from a source directory and overwrite some files in
the destination directory, i want to do this using a script.

if i ran the script on freebsd i could do something like this
Code:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

sourcee='original-configuration/source/'
destination='/etc/destin'

cp -rv ${sourcee} ${destination

}


but in linux i have the following:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

sourcee='original-configuration/source'
destination='/etc/destin'

cp -rv ${sourcee}/* --target-directory=${destination}

is it possible no to use shell globing with gnu cp?
should i use a different tool? or should i use gnu cp in a different way?

thanks in advance for your answers,
nicolas
 

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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

paps

PAPS(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   PAPS(1)

NAME

       paps - UTF-8 to PostScript converter using Pango

SYNOPSIS

       paps [options] files...

DESCRIPTION

       paps reads a UTF-8 encoded file and generates a PostScript language rendering of the file. The rendering is done by creating outline curves
       through the pango ft2 backend.

OPTIONS

       These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with  two  dashes  (`-').   A  summary  of  options	is
       included below.

       --landscape
	      Landscape output. Default is portrait.

       --columns=cl
	      Number of columns output. Default is 1.

       --font=desc
	      Set the font description. Default is Monospace 12.

       --rtl  Do rtl layout.

       --paper ps
	      Choose paper size. Known paper sizes are legal, letter, a4. Default is A4.

       --bottom-margin=bm
	      Set bottom margin in postscript points (1/72 inch). Default is 36.

       --top-margin=tm
	      Set top margin. Default is 36.

       --left-margin=lm
	      Set left margin. Default is 36.

       --right-margin=rm
	      Set right margin. Default is 36.

       --help Show summary of options.

       --header
	      Draw page header for each page.

       --markup
	      Interpret the text as pango markup.

       --encoding=ENCODING
	      Assume the documentation encoding is ENCODING.

       --lpi  Set the lines per inch. This determines the line spacing.

       --cpi  Set the characters per inch. This is an alternative method of specifying the font size.

       --stretch-chars
	      Indicates  that  characters  should be stretched in the y-direction to fill up their vertical space. This is similar to the texttops
	      behaviour.

AUTHOR

       paps was written by Dov Grobgeld <dov.grobgeld@gmail.com>.

       This manual page was written by Lior Kaplan <kaplan@debian.org>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).

								  April  17, 2006							   PAPS(1)
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