How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command

Question

Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command    I tried the following   which did not work     cp file1  foo   bar  cp file1   foo   bar    I know it s possible using a for loop  or find  But is it possible using the gnu cp command

User · Answer

Essentially equivalent to the xargs answer, but in case you want parallel execution:

parallel -q cp file1 ::: /foo/ /bar/

So, for example, to copy file1 into all subdirectories of current folder (including recursion):

parallel -q cp file1 ::: `find -mindepth 1 -type d`

N.B.: This probably only conveys any noticeable speed gains for very specific use cases, e.g. if each target directory is a distinct disk.

It is also functionally similar to the '-P' argument for xargs.

User · Answer

To use copying with xargs to directories using wildcards on Mac OS  the only solution that worked for me with spaces in the directory name is   find   fs    -type d -print0   xargs -0 -n 1 cp test    Where test is the file to copy And   fs    the directories to copy to  The problem is that xargs sees spaces as a new argument  the solutions to change the delimiter character using -d or -E is unfortunately not properly working on Mac OS

User · Answer

Suppose you want to copy fileName txt to all sub-directories within present working directory    Get all sub-directories names through ls and save them to some temporary file say  allFolders txt  ls  gt  allFolders txt  Print the list and pass it to command xargs   cat allFolders txt   xargs -n 1 cp fileName txt

User · Answer

I like to copy a file into multiple directories as such  cp file1  foo   cp file1  bar   cp file1  foo2   cp file1  bar2  And copying a directory into other directories  cp -r dir1   foo   cp -r dir1   bar   cp -r dir1   foo2   cp -r dir1   bar2   I know it s like issuing several commands  but it works well for me when I want to type 1 line and walk away for a while

User · Answer

If you want to do it without a forked command   tee  lt inputfile file2 file3 file4      gt  dev null

User · Answer

To use copying with xargs to directories using wildcards on Mac OS  the only solution that worked for me with spaces in the directory name is   find   fs    -type d -print0   xargs -0 -n 1 cp test    Where test is the file to copy And   fs    the directories to copy to  The problem is that xargs sees spaces as a new argument  the solutions to change the delimiter character using -d or -E is unfortunately not properly working on Mac OS

User · Answer

I like to copy a file into multiple directories as such  cp file1  foo   cp file1  bar   cp file1  foo2   cp file1  bar2  And copying a directory into other directories  cp -r dir1   foo   cp -r dir1   bar   cp -r dir1   foo2   cp -r dir1   bar2   I know it s like issuing several commands  but it works well for me when I want to type 1 line and walk away for a while

User · Answer

I would use cat and tee based on the answers I saw at https   superuser com questions 32630 parallel-file-copy-from-single-source-to-multiple-targets instead of cp   For example   cat inputfile   tee outfile1 outfile2  gt   dev null

User · Answer

As far as I can see it you can use the following   ls   xargs -n 1 cp -i file dat   The -i option of cp command means that you will be asked whether to overwrite a file in the current directory with the file dat  Though it is not a completely automatic solution it worked out for me

User · Answer

If you need to be specific on into which folders to copy the file you can combine find with one or more greps  For example to replace any occurences of favicon ico in any subfolder you can use   find     grep favicon  ico   xargs -n 1 cp -f  root favicon ico

User · Answer

For example if you are in the parent directory of you destination folders you can do   for i in   ls   do cp sourcefile  i  done

User · Answer

Another way is to use cat and tee as follows   cat  lt source file gt    tee  lt destination file 1 gt    tee  lt destination file 2 gt         gt   lt last destination file gt    I think this would be pretty inefficient though  since the job would be split among several processes  one per destination  and the hard drive would be writing several files at once over different parts of the platter   However if you wanted to write a file out to several different drives  this method would probably be pretty efficient  as all copies could happen concurrently

User · Answer

Wildcards also work with Roberts code  echo   fs      xargs -n 1 cp test

User · Answer

For example if you are in the parent directory of you destination folders you can do   for i in   ls   do cp sourcefile  i  done

User · Answer

Using a bash script  DESTINATIONPATH 0   xxx yyy  DESTINATIONPATH 1   aaa bbb                     DESTINATIONPATH 5   MainLine USER  NumberOfDestinations 6  for    i 0  i lt NumberOfDestinations  i         do         cp  SourcePath fileName ext   DESTINATIONPATH  i        done exit

User · Answer

No  cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination  You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do  using  as you say  a loop or some other tool

User · Answer

You can t do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp file1   Will copy file1 to dir1  dir2  and dir3   xargs will call cp 3 times to do this  see the man page for xargs for details

User · Answer

Essentially equivalent to the xargs answer, but in case you want parallel execution:

parallel -q cp file1 ::: /foo/ /bar/

So, for example, to copy file1 into all subdirectories of current folder (including recursion):

parallel -q cp file1 ::: `find -mindepth 1 -type d`

N.B.: This probably only conveys any noticeable speed gains for very specific use cases, e.g. if each target directory is a distinct disk.

It is also functionally similar to the '-P' argument for xargs.

User · Answer

Another way is to use cat and tee as follows   cat  lt source file gt    tee  lt destination file 1 gt    tee  lt destination file 2 gt         gt   lt last destination file gt    I think this would be pretty inefficient though  since the job would be split among several processes  one per destination  and the hard drive would be writing several files at once over different parts of the platter   However if you wanted to write a file out to several different drives  this method would probably be pretty efficient  as all copies could happen concurrently

User · Answer

I would use cat and tee based on the answers I saw at https   superuser com questions 32630 parallel-file-copy-from-single-source-to-multiple-targets instead of cp   For example   cat inputfile   tee outfile1 outfile2  gt   dev null

User · Answer

No  cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination  You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do  using  as you say  a loop or some other tool

User · Answer

No - you cannot   I ve found on multiple occasions that I could use this functionality so I ve made my own tool to do this for me   http   github com ddavison branch  pretty simple - branch myfile dir1 dir2 dir3

User · Answer

ls -db di  subdir   xargs -n 1 cp File  -b in case there is a space in directory name otherwise it will be broken as a different item by xargs  had this problem with the echo version

User · Answer

if you want to copy multiple folders to multiple folders one can do something like this   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp -r  path toyourdir  subdir1 subdir2 subdir3

User · Answer

No  cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination  You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do  using  as you say  a loop or some other tool

User · Answer

Suppose you want to copy fileName txt to all sub-directories within present working directory    Get all sub-directories names through ls and save them to some temporary file say  allFolders txt  ls  gt  allFolders txt  Print the list and pass it to command xargs   cat allFolders txt   xargs -n 1 cp fileName txt

User · Answer

if you want to copy multiple folders to multiple folders one can do something like this   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp -r  path toyourdir  subdir1 subdir2 subdir3

User · Answer

ls -d      xargs -iA cp file txt A

User · Answer

These answers all seem more complicated than the obvious   for i in  foo  bar  do cp   file1    i   done

User · Answer

You can t do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp file1   Will copy file1 to dir1  dir2  and dir3   xargs will call cp 3 times to do this  see the man page for xargs for details

User · Answer

If you need to be specific on into which folders to copy the file you can combine find with one or more greps  For example to replace any occurences of favicon ico in any subfolder you can use   find     grep favicon  ico   xargs -n 1 cp -f  root favicon ico

User · Answer

ls -d      xargs -iA cp file txt A

User · Answer

ls -db di  subdir   xargs -n 1 cp File  -b in case there is a space in directory name otherwise it will be broken as a different item by xargs  had this problem with the echo version

User · Answer

If all your target directories match a path expression     like they re all subdirectories of path to     then just use find in combination with cp like this   find   path to   -type d -exec cp  file name          That s it

User · Answer

Not using cp per se  but     This came up for me in the context of copying lots of Gopro footage off of a  slow  SD card to three  slow  USB drives  I wanted to read the data only once  because it took forever  And I wanted it recursive     tar cf - src   tee  gt   cd dest1   tar xf -    gt   cd dest2   tar xf -       cd dest3   tar xf -      And you can add more of those     sections if you want more outputs    I haven t benchmarked that  but it s definitely a lot faster than cp-in-a-loop  or a bunch of parallel cp invocations

User · Answer

This will copy to the immediate sub-directories  if you want to go deeper  adjust the -maxdepth parameter     find   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d  xargs -n 1 cp -i index html   If you don t want to copy to all directories  hopefully you can filter the directories you are not interested in  Example copying to all folders starting with a  find   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d  grep   a  xargs -n 1 cp -i index html   If copying to a arbitrary disjoint set of directories you ll need Robert Gamble s suggestion

User · Answer

This will copy to the immediate sub-directories  if you want to go deeper  adjust the -maxdepth parameter     find   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d  xargs -n 1 cp -i index html   If you don t want to copy to all directories  hopefully you can filter the directories you are not interested in  Example copying to all folders starting with a  find   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d  grep   a  xargs -n 1 cp -i index html   If copying to a arbitrary disjoint set of directories you ll need Robert Gamble s suggestion

User · Answer

If you want to do it without a forked command   tee  lt inputfile file2 file3 file4      gt  dev null

User · Answer

As far as I can see it you can use the following   ls   xargs -n 1 cp -i file dat   The -i option of cp command means that you will be asked whether to overwrite a file in the current directory with the file dat  Though it is not a completely automatic solution it worked out for me

User · Answer

You can t do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp file1   Will copy file1 to dir1  dir2  and dir3   xargs will call cp 3 times to do this  see the man page for xargs for details

User · Answer

If all your target directories match a path expression     like they re all subdirectories of path to     then just use find in combination with cp like this   find   path to   -type d -exec cp  file name          That s it

User · Answer

These answers all seem more complicated than the obvious   for i in  foo  bar  do cp   file1    i   done

User · Answer

No  cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination  You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do  using  as you say  a loop or some other tool

User · Answer

You can t do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs   echo dir1 dir2 dir3   xargs -n 1 cp file1   Will copy file1 to dir1  dir2  and dir3   xargs will call cp 3 times to do this  see the man page for xargs for details

User · Answer

Using a bash script  DESTINATIONPATH 0   xxx yyy  DESTINATIONPATH 1   aaa bbb                     DESTINATIONPATH 5   MainLine USER  NumberOfDestinations 6  for    i 0  i lt NumberOfDestinations  i         do         cp  SourcePath fileName ext   DESTINATIONPATH  i        done exit

User · Answer

No - you cannot   I ve found on multiple occasions that I could use this functionality so I ve made my own tool to do this for me   http   github com ddavison branch  pretty simple - branch myfile dir1 dir2 dir3

User · Answer

Not using cp per se  but     This came up for me in the context of copying lots of Gopro footage off of a  slow  SD card to three  slow  USB drives  I wanted to read the data only once  because it took forever  And I wanted it recursive     tar cf - src   tee  gt   cd dest1   tar xf -    gt   cd dest2   tar xf -       cd dest3   tar xf -      And you can add more of those     sections if you want more outputs    I haven t benchmarked that  but it s definitely a lot faster than cp-in-a-loop  or a bunch of parallel cp invocations

User · Answer

Wildcards also work with Roberts code  echo   fs      xargs -n 1 cp test

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