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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting copy only newer files? (xcopy equivalent) Post 91350 by Chomps on Thursday 1st of December 2005 09:36:51 AM
Old 12-01-2005
copy only newer files? (xcopy equivalent)

Howdy folks.

I have a problem - I'm sure the answer is very simple, but I can't work it out.

I want to create a UNIX shell script that does what I've been doing in DOS batch files for years - that is, backing up files. By which I mean copying files from a source directory to a target directory, only if a) the file doesn't exist at the target, or b) the file does exist but is older than the source.

In DOS, I did something like this:

xcopy c:\path\directory\*.* x:\backup\ /d /e

Where x was a networked drive, /d meaning only copy files newer than the target, /e meaning recurse into subdirectories.

In UNIX, I'm close but no cigar yet... I have the following:

cp -r /testdir/source/ /testdir/target/

This works in that it copies files, leaving the originals behind and recursing into subdirectories, but it doesn't only copy source files if they're newer than the target. It copies eveything.

I have read in a few different places that cp accepts the -u ('update' I think) option, to make it only copy newer files, but I can't get this to work. If I write cp -u, I am told that 'u' is an 'illegal option' for cp.

So, is there a way to get the behviour I'm after? Am I right to be using cp, or is there a better function to do what I want?

Doing all this on Mac OS 10.3.9, using the terminal, tcsh.

Very grateful for any help.

Cheers.
 

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RCP(1)							      General Commands Manual							    RCP(1)

NAME
rcp - remote file copy SYNOPSIS
rcp [-p] file1 file2 rcp [-pr] file ... directory DESCRIPTION
Rcp copies files between machines. Each file or directory argument is either a remote file name of the form ``rhost:path'', or a local file name (containing no `:' characters, or a `/' before any `:'s). If the -r option is specified and any of the source files are directories, rcp copies each subtree rooted at that name; in this case the destination must be a directory. By default, the mode and owner of file2 are preserved if it already existed; otherwise the mode of the source file modified by the umask(2) on the destination host is used. The -p option causes rcp to attempt to preserve (duplicate) in its copies the modification times and modes of the source files, ignoring the umask. If path is not a full path name, it is interpreted relative to your login directory on rhost. A path on a remote host may be quoted (using , ", or ') so that the metacharacters are interpreted remotely. Rcp does not prompt for passwords; your current local user name must exist on rhost and allow remote command execution via rsh(1). Rcp handles third party copies, where neither source nor target files are on the current machine. Hostnames may also take the form ``rname@rhost'' to use rname rather than the current user name on the remote host. The destination hostname may also take the form ``rhost.rname'' to support destination machines that are running 4.2BSD versions of rcp. SEE ALSO
cp(1), ftp(1), rsh(1), rlogin(1). BUGS
Doesn't detect all cases where the target of a copy might be a file in cases where only a directory should be legal. Is confused by any output generated by commands in a .profile, or .*shrc file on the remote host. 4.2 Berkeley Distribution May 12, 1986 RCP(1)
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