UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I want to copy a file/directory ( recursively , if needed) and if destination directory does not exist create it ( with parent directory, if needed).

Code:

 funcopy () {
if [ -d "$2" ]; then 
echo "$2 exists , copying files"
cp -r "$1" "$2"
else
echo "Directory does not exist;Create directory"
mkdir -p $2
echo "copy files"
cp -r "$1" "$2"
fi
}

This works as expected when i try to copy a file or directory.
If i try with *.xml or *. options, it throws error.

Code:

$ ls *.xml
a.xml meld.xml
$ funcopy *.xml /home/$USER/Desktop/ABC
mkdir: cannot create directory `meld.xml': File exists
copy file a.xml to meld.xml

Here it replaces a.xml content to meld.xml and it did not create directory ABC under Desktop to copy.

Can someone please explain why it happens ? How i can avoid it ?

Fileglob (things like '*.txt') is not an argument. The shell expands it to all files matching a pattern and then all these files become arguments to a command.
Look at:

Code:

sh -x -c 'echo *'

and you can see what really echo gets as arguments.
And how avoid? In your example - just use "cp". In more realistic example - call a function with necessary arguments at the front of argument list and work with optional arguments using standard shell technique - $@ array, for loop, shift builtin.