How to copy and edit files in Android shell

Question

The Android shell does not have the cp command  Android shell also has no sed or grep or vi  I have no adb daemon available  There is mv command but it rejects to work if source is on a read-only device     What to do if I have to copy some directories from read-only device recursively   How to change a line in a text file  e g   PATH  cache  to be  PATH  mnt asec

User · Answer

You can do it without root permissions   cat srcfile  gt   mnt sdcard dstfile

User · Answer

Since the permission policy on my device is a bit paranoid  cannot adb pull application data   I wrote a script to copy files recursively   Note  this recursive file folder copy script is intended for Android   copy-r       system bin sh  src   1  dst   2  dir0  pwd   myfind         local fpath  1      if   -e   fpath        then     echo  fpath     if   -d   fpath        then         for fn in  fpath           do             myfind  fn         done     fi     else       echo   fpath not found      fi     if     -z   dst    then     if   -d   src        then     echo  the source is a directory       mkdir -p  dst      if      dst              then             Absolute path     else           Relative path         dst  pwd   dst     fi      cd  src     echo  COPYING files and directories from  pwd       for fn in   myfind        do         if   -d  fn           then             echo  DIR   dst  fn              mkdir -p  dst  fn         else             echo  FILE  dst  fn              cat  fn  gt  dst  fn         fi     done     echo  DONE      cd  dir0      elif   -f   src        then     echo  the source is a file      srcn    src           if   -z   srcn        then         srcn   src      fi      if      dst              then         mkdir -p  dst         echo  copying  src   - gt     dst  srcn          cat  src  gt  dst  srcn     elif   -d   dst        then         echo  copying  src   - gt     dst  srcn          cat  src  gt  dst  srcn     else         dstdir   dst             if     -z   dstdir            then             mkdir -p  dstdir         fi         echo  copying  src   - gt     dst          cat  src  gt  dst     fi     else     echo   src is neither a file nor a directory      fi else     echo  Use  copy-r src-dir dst-dir      echo  Use  copy-r src-file existing-dst-dir      echo  Use  copy-r src-file dst-dir       echo  Use  copy-r src-file dst-file  fi   Here I provide the source of a lightweight find for Android because on some devices this utility is missing  Instead of myfind one can use find  if it is defined on the device   Installation     adb push copy-r  sdcard    Running within adb shell  rooted         sdcard copy-r files   sdcard files3    or    source  sdcard copy-r files   sdcard files3     The hash   above is the su prompt  while   is the command that causes the shell to run the specified file  almost the same as source    After copying  I can adb pull the files from the sd-card   Writing files to the app directory was trickier  I tried to set r w permissions on files and its subdirectories  it did not work  well  it allowed me to read  but not write  which is strange   so I had to do           String   cmdline      sh    -c    source  sdcard copy-r  sdcard files4  data data com example myapp files              try               Runtime getRuntime   exec cmdline             catch  IOException e                e printStackTrace                in the application s onCreate     PS just in case someone needs the code to unprotect application s directories to enable adb shell access on a non-rooted phone            setRW appContext getFilesDir   getParentFile          public static void setRW File    files            for  File file   files                if  file isDirectory                      setRW file listFiles        Calls same method again                else                             file setReadable true  false               file setWritable true  false                     although for some unknown reason I could read but not write

User · Answer

I tried following on mac    Launch Terminal and move to folder where adb is located  On Mac  usually at  Library Android sdk platform-tools  Connect device now with developer mode on and check device status with command   adb status       is to be prefixed with  adb   Now we may need know destination folder location in our device  You can check this with adb shell  Use command   adb shell to enter an adb shell  Now we have access  to device s folder using shell  You may list out all folders using command ls -la  Usually we find a folder  sdcard within our device  You can choose any folder here   Suppose my destination is  sdcard 3233-3453 DCIM Videos and source is   Documents Videos film mp4 Now we can exit adb shell  to access filesystem on our machine  Command    adb exit  Now   adb push  source location   destination location  i e    adb push   Documents Videos film mp4  sdcard 3233-3453 DCIM Videos Voila

User · Answer

Android supports the dd command   dd if  path file of  path file

User · Answer

Also if the goal is only to access the files on the phone  There is a File Explorer that is accessible from the Eclipse DDMS perspective  It lets you copy file from and to the device  So you can always get the file  modify it and put it back on the device  Of course it enables to access only the files that are not read protected   If you don t see the File Explorer  from the DDMS perspective  go in  Window  -   Show View  -   File Explorer

User · Answer

The most common answer to that is simple  Bundle few apps  busybox   with your APK  assuming you want to use it within an application   As far as I know  the  data partition is not mounted noexec  and even if you don t want to deploy a fully-fledged APK  you could modify ConnectBot sources to build an APK with a set of command line tools included   For command line tools  I recommend using crosstool-ng and building a set of statically-linked tools  linked against uClibc   They might be big  but they ll definitely work

User · Answer

You can use cat  gt  filename to use standart input to write to the file  At the end you have to put EOF CTRL D

User · Answer

To copy dirs  it seems you can use adb pull  lt remote gt   lt local gt  if you want to copy file dir from device  and adb push  lt local gt   lt remote gt  to copy file dir to device  Alternatively  just to copy a file  you can use a simple trick  cat source file  gt  dest file  Note that this does not work for user-inaccessible paths   To edit files  I have not found a simple solution  just some possible workarounds  Try this  it seems you can  after the setup  use it to edit files like busybox vi  lt filename gt   Nano seems to be possible to use too

User · Answer

If you just want to append to a file  e g  to add some lines to a configuration file  inbuilt shell commands are enough   adb shell cat  gt  gt   path to file  lt  lt EOF some text to append a second line of text to append EOF exit   In the above  replace  path to file with the file you want to edit  You ll need to have write permission on the file  which implies root access if you re editing a system file  Secondly  replace some text to append and a second line of text to append with the lines you want to add

User · Answer

I could suggest just install Terminal-ide on you device which available in play market  Its free  does not require root and provide convenient  nix environment like cp  find  du  mc and many other utilities which installed in binary form by one button tap

User · Answer

If you have root access install busybox  google for instructions

[android] How to copy and edit files in Android shell?

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