Copy folder recursively excluding some folders

Question

I am trying to write a simple bash script that will copy the entire contents of a folder including hidden files and folders into another folder  but I want to exclude certain specific folders   How could I achieve this

User · Answer

you can use tar  with --exclude option   and then untar it in destination  eg  cd  source directory tar cvf test tar --exclude dir to exclude   mv test tar  destination  cd  destination   tar xvf test tar   see the man page of tar for more info

User · Answer

You can use find with the -prune option   An example from man find           cd  source-dir        find   -name  snapshot -prune -o       -name    -print0            cpio -pmd0  dest-dir         This command copies the contents of  source-dir to  dest-dir  but omits        files  and directories named  snapshot  and anything in them    It also        omits files or directories whose name ends in     but  not  their  con-        tents   The construct -prune -o        -print0    is quite common   The        idea here is that the expression before -prune matches things which are        to  be  pruned   However  the -prune action itself returns true  so the        following -o ensures that the right hand side  is  evaluated  only  for        those  directories  which didn t get pruned  the contents of the pruned        directories are not even visited  so their  contents  are  irrelevant          The  expression on the right hand side of the -o is in parentheses only        for clarity   It emphasises that the -print0 action  takes  place  only        for  things  that  didn t  have  -prune  applied  to them   Because the        default  and  condition between tests binds more tightly than -o   this        is  the  default anyway  but the parentheses help to show what is going        on

User · Answer

Use tar along with a pipe   cd  source directory tar cf - --exclude dir to exclude      cd  destination  amp  amp  tar xvf -     You can even use this technique across ssh

User · Answer

inspired by  SteveLazaridis s answer  which would fail  here is a POSIX shell function - just copy and paste into a file named cpx in yout  PATH and make it executible  chmod a x cpr    Source is now maintained in my GitLab      bin sh    usage  cpx  -n --dry-run   from path   to path   newline separated exclude list    limitations  only excludes from  from path   not it s subdirectories  cpx       run in subshell to avoid collisions     CopyWithExclude           CopyWithExclude       case   1  in     -n --dry-run    DryRun  echo   shift         esac    from   1    to   2    exclude   3      DryRun mkdir -p   to     if   -z   exclude     then       cp   from    to        return   fi    ls -A1   from          while IFS  read -r f  do         unset excluded         if   -n   exclude     then           for x in   printf   exclude    do           if     f      x     then               excluded 1               break           fi           done         fi         f    f  from            if   -z   excluded     then            DryRun cp -R   f    to          else             -n   DryRun     amp  amp  echo  skip   f           fi       done      Do not execute if being sourced      0  cpx        0     amp  amp  cpx        Example usage  EXCLUDE    git my secret stuff   cpr   HOME my stuff    media usb    EXCLUDE

User · Answer

Similar to Jeff s idea  untested    find   -name   -print0   grep -v  exclude    xargs -0 -I    cp -a    destination

User · Answer

Quick Start Run  rsync -av --exclude  path1 in source  --exclude  path2 in source   source    destination     Notes  -avr will create a new directory named  destination   source and source  create different results   source     copy the contents of source into destination  source      copy the folder source into destination    To exclude many files   --exclude-from FILE     FILE is the name of a file containing other files or directories to exclude    --exclude may also contain wildcards   e g  --exclude    svn     Modified from  https   stackoverflow com a 2194500 749232   Example Starting folder structure     -- destination  -- source      -- fileToCopy rtf      -- fileToExclude rtf  Run  rsync -av --exclude  fileToCopy rtf  source  destination  Ending folder structure     -- destination         -- fileToExclude rtf  -- source      -- fileToCopy rtf      -- fileToExclude rtf

User · Answer

Use rsync   rsync -av --exclude  path1 to exclude  --exclude  path2 to exclude  source destination   Note that using source and source  are different   A trailing slash means to copy the contents of the folder source into destination   Without the trailing slash  it means copy the folder source into destination   Alternatively  if you have lots of directories  or files  to exclude  you can use --exclude-from FILE  where FILE is the name of a file containing files or directories to exclude   --exclude may also contain wildcards  such as --exclude    svn

User · Answer

EXCLUDE  foo bar blah jah                                                                               DEST  1  for i in   do     for x in  EXCLUDE     do           if    x     i    then             cp -a  i  DEST         fi       done done   Untested

[bash] Copy folder recursively, excluding some folders

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