[linux] How to have the cp command create any necessary folders for copying a file to a destination

When copying a file using cp to a folder that may or may not exist, how do I get cp to create the folder if necessary? Here is what I have tried:

[root@file nutch-0.9]# cp -f urls-resume /nosuchdirectory/hi.txt
cp: cannot create regular file `/nosuchdirectory/hi.txt': No such file or directory

 mkdir -p `dirname /nosuchdirectory/hi.txt` && cp -r urls-resume /nosuchdirectory/hi.txt

There is no such option. What you can do is to run mkdir -p before copying the file

I made a very cool script you can use to copy files in locations that doesn't exist

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -d "$2" ]; then
    mkdir -p "$2"
fi
cp -R "$1" "$2"

Now just save it, give it permissions and run it using

./cp-improved SOURCE DEST

I put -R option but it's just a draft, I know it can be and you will improve it in many ways. Hope it helps you

I didn't know you could do that with cp.

You can do it with mkdir ..

mkdir -p /var/path/to/your/dir

EDIT See lhunath's answer for incorporating cp.

cp -Rvn /source/path/* /destination/path/
cp: /destination/path/any.zip: No such file or directory

It will create no existing paths in destination, if path have a source file inside. This dont create empty directories.

A moment ago i've seen xxxxxxxx: No such file or directory, because i run out of free space. without error message.

with ditto:

ditto -V /source/path/* /destination/path
ditto: /destination/path/any.zip: No space left on device

once freed space cp -Rvn /source/path/* /destination/path/ works as expected

For those that are on Mac OSX, perhaps the easiest way to work around this is to use ditto (only on the mac, AFAIK, though). It will create the directory structure that is missing in the destination.

For instance, I did this

ditto 6.3.2/6.3.2/macosx/bin/mybinary ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.2/

where ~/work did not contain the binaries directory before I ran the command.

I thought rsync should work similarly, but it seems it only works for one level of missing directories. That is,

rsync 6.3.3/6.3.3/macosx/bin/mybinary ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.3/

worked, because ~/work/binaries/macosx existed but not ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.2/

To expand upon Christian's answer, the only reliable way to do this would be to combine mkdir and cp:

mkdir -p /foo/bar && cp myfile "$_"

As an aside, when you only need to create a single directory in an existing hierarchy, rsync can do it in one operation. I'm quite a fan of rsync as a much more versatile cp replacement, in fact:

rsync -a myfile /foo/bar/ # works if /foo exists but /foo/bar doesn't.  bar is created.

rsync is work!

#file:
rsync -aqz _vimrc ~/.vimrc

#directory:
rsync -aqz _vim/ ~/.vim

One can also use the command find:

find ./ -depth -print | cpio -pvd newdirpathname