Copy files from one directory into an existing directory

Question

In bash I need to do this    take all files in a directory  copy them into an existing directory   How do I do this  I tried cp -r t1 t2  both t1 and t2 are existing directories  t1 has files in it  but it created a directory called t1 inside t2  I don t want that  I need the files in t1 to go directly inside t2  How do I do this

User · Answer

cp dir1   dir2   Or if you have directories inside dir1 that you d want to copy as well  cp -r dir1   dir2

User · Answer

Assuming t1 is the folder with files in it  and t2 is the empty directory  What you want is something like this   sudo cp -R t1   t2    Bear in mind  for the first example  t1 and t2 have to be the full paths  or relative paths  based on where you are   If you want  you can navigate to the empty folder  t2  and do this   sudo cp -R t1        Or you can navigate to the folder with files  t1  and do this   sudo cp -R     t2    Note  The   sign  or wildcard  stands for all files and folders  The -R flag means recursively  everything inside everything

User · Answer

Depending on some details you might need to do something like this   r   pwd  case   TARG  in         p  r          p          esac cd   SRC   amp  amp  cp -r     p  TARG  cd   r        this basically changes to the SRC directory and copies it to the target  then returns back to whence ever you started   The extra fussing is to handle relative or absolute targets    This doesn t rely on subtle semantics of the cp command itself     about how it handles source specifications with or without a trailing       since I m not sure those are stable  portable  and reliable beyond just GNU cp and I don t know if they ll continue to be so in the future

User · Answer

What you want is   cp -R t1   t2    The dot at the end tells it to copy the contents of the current directory  not the directory itself  This method also includes hidden files and folders

User · Answer

If you want to copy something from one directory into the current directory  do this   cp dir1       This assumes you re not trying to copy hidden files

User · Answer

cp -R t1  t2   The trailing slash on the source directory changes the semantics slightly  so it copies the contents but not the directory itself   It also avoids the problems with globbing and invisible files that Bertrand s answer has  copying t1   misses invisible files  copying  t1   t1     copies t1   and t1     which you don t want

User · Answer

For inside some directory  this will be use full as it copy all contents from  folder1  to new directory  folder2  inside some directory     pwd  will get path for current directory   Notice the dot     after folder1 to get all contents inside folder1  cp -r   pwd  folder1     pwd  folder2

[bash] Copy files from one directory into an existing directory

Examples related to bash

Examples related to file

Examples related to directory

Examples related to copy

Examples related to cp