How to use cp command to exclude a specific directory

Question

I want to copy all files in a directory except some files in a specific sub-directory  I have noticed that cp command didn t have the --exclude option  So  how can I achieve this

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mv tobecopied tobeexcluded   cp -r tobecopied dest  mv tobeexcluded tobecopied

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This is a modification of Linus Kleen s answer  His answer didn t work for me because there would be a   added in front of the file path which cp doesn t like  the path would look like source  destination file    This command worked for me   find   -type f -not -path    exlude-path    -exec cp --parents        destination       the --parents command preserves the directory structure

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cp -r ls -A   grep -v  Excluded File or folder      target location -v

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10 years late  Credits to Linus Kleen  I hate rsync     So why not use find and cp  And with this answer also mkdir to create a non-existent folder structure  cd  source folder   amp  amp  find   -type d -not -path    not-from-here    -print -exec mkdir -p   destination folder        cd  source folder   amp  amp  find   -type f -not -path    not-from-here    -print -exec cp -au        destination folder        It looks like cd   s necessary to concat relative paths with find  mkdir -p will create all subfolders and will not complain when a folder already exists   Housten we have the next problem  What happens when someone creates a new folder with a new file in the middle of it  Exactly  it will fail for these new files   Solution  just run it again      The solution to put everything into one find command seems difficult   For clean-up  https   unix stackexchange com q 627218 239596

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rsync is actually quite tricky  have to do multiple tests to make it work    Let s say you want to copy  var www html to  var www dev but need to exclude  var www html site video  directory maybe due to its size  The command would be   rsync -av --exclude  sites video   var www html   var www dev  Some caveat    The last slash   in the source is needed  otherwise it will also copy the source directory rather than its content and becomes  var www dev html xxxx  which maybe is not what you want   The the --exclude path is relative to the source directly  Even if you put full absolute path  it will not work   -v is for verbose  -a is for archive mode which means you want recursion and want to preserve almost everything

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I use a  do while  loop to read the output of the find command   In this example  I am matching  rather than excluding  certain patterns since there are a more limited number of pattern matches that I want than that I don t want   You could reverse the logic with a -not in front of the -iname flags       find   -type f -iname    flac  -o -print0 -iname    mp3  -print0 -o -iname    wav  -print0 -o -iname    aac  -print0 -o -iname    wma  -print0   while read -d    0  file  do cp -ruv   file    media wd network sync music  file   done   I use the above to copy all music type files that are newer on my server than the files on a Western Digital TV Live Hub that I have mounted at  media wd  I use the above because I have a lot of DVD files  mpegs  etc  that I want to exclude AND because for some reason rsync looks like it is copying  but after I look at the wd device  the files are not there despite no errors during the rsync with this command       rsync -av --progress --exclude   VOB --exclude   avi --exclude   mkv --exclude   ts --exclude   mpg --exclude   iso --exclude  ar --exclude   vob --exclude   BUP --exclude   cdi --exclude   ISO --exclude   shn --exclude   MPG --exclude   AVI --exclude   DAT --exclude   img --exclude   nrg --exclude   cdr --exclude   bin --exclude   MOV --exclude   goutputs  --exclude   flv --exclude   mov --exclude   m2ts --exclude   cdg --exclude   IFO --exclude   asf --exclude   ite  media 2TB  Data data music    media wd network sync music

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It s relative to the source directory   This will exclude the directory source  git from being copied    rsync -r --exclude   git  source target

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Why use rsync when you can do   find   -type f -not -iname    not-from-here    -exec cp        dest           This assumes the target directory structure being the same as the source s

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ls -I  filename1  -I  filename2    xargs cp -rf -t destdir    The first part ls all the files but hidden specific files with flag -I  The output of ls is used as standard input for the second part  xargs build and execute command cp -rf -t destdir from standard input  the flag -r means copy directories recursively  -f means copy files forcibly which will overwrite the files in the destdir  -t specify the destination directory copy to

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Well  if exclusion of certain filename patterns had to be performed by every unix-ish file utility  like cp  mv  rm  tar  rsync  scp        an immense duplication of effort would occur  Instead  such things can be done as part of globbing  i e  by your shell  bash man 1 bash    extglob  Example     shopt -s extglob   echo images   images 004 bmp images 033 jpg images 1276338351183 jpg images 2252 png   echo images     jpg  images 004 bmp images 2252 png  So you just put a pattern inside      and it negates the match  The pattern can be arbitrarily complex  starting from enumeration of individual paths  as Vanwaril shows in another answer     filename1 path2 etc3   to regex-like things with stars and character classes  Refer to the manpage for details  zsh man 1 zshexpn    filename generation  You can do setopt KSH GLOB and use bash-like patterns  Or     setopt EXTENDED GLOB   echo images   images 004 bmp images 033 jpg images 1276338351183 jpg images 2252 png   echo images     jpg images 004 bmp images 2252 png  So x y matches pattern x  but excludes pattern y  Once again  for full details refer to manpage   fishnew  The fish shell has a much prettier answer to this    cp  string match -v    excluded names  -- srcdir    destdir   Bonus pro-tip Type cp    hit CtrlX  and just see what happens  it s not harmful I promise

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rsync is fast and easy   rsync -av --progress sourcefolder  destinationfolder --exclude thefoldertoexclude   You can use --exclude multiples times    rsync -av --progress sourcefolder  destinationfolder --exclude thefoldertoexclude --exclude anotherfoldertoexclude   Note that the dir thefoldertoexclude after --exclude option is relative to the sourcefolder  i e   sourcefolder thefoldertoexclude   Also you can add -n for dry run to see what will be copied before performing  real operation  and if everything is ok  remove -n from command line

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rsync  rsync -r --verbose --exclude  exclude pattern       to where    and first try it with -n option to see what is going to be copied

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The easiest way I found  where you can copy all the files excluding files and folders just by adding their names in the parentheses   shopt -s extglob cp -r   Filename1   FoldernameX   Filename2  Dest

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Expanding on mvds   s comment  this works for me  cd dotfiles tar -c --exclude  git --exclude README     tar -x -C   dotfiles2

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I assume you re using bash or dash   Would this work   shopt -s extglob    sets extended pattern matching options in the bash shell cp   ls -laR   subdir file1 file2 subdir2 file3   destination   Doing an ls excluding the files you don t want  and using that as the first argument for cp

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cp -rv  ls -A   grep -vE  dirToExclude targetDir   targetDir   Edit  forgot to exclude the target path as well  otherwise it would recursively copy

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Another simpler option is to install and use rsync which has an --exclude-dir option  and can be used for both local and remote files

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cp -r  ls -A   grep -v  c    HOME

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Just move it temporally into a hidden directory  and rename it after  if wanted    mkdir  hiddendir cp    hiddendir -R mv  hiddendir realdirname

[linux] How to use 'cp' command to exclude a specific directory?

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