RE: How to overwrite the destination directory by 'cp'?

[Voelker, Bernhard]

Peng Yu wrote:

> Suppose I have directory a and b, the following command will copy the
> content of a to b/a, rather than overwrite the directory 'b' by the
> directory 'a'. I'm wondering if there is an option to overwrite 'b'?
> 
> cp -r a b

you mean something like this?
  cp -r a/. b

Have a look with cp's option -v to see what it does:

$ mkdir a a/d1 a/d2 b b/d1 b/d3

$ touch a/f1 a/d1/d1f1 a/d1/d1f2 a/d2/d2f1
$ touch b/f1 b/f2 b/d1/d1f1 b/d1/d1f2 b/d3/d3f1

$ cp -rv a/. b
`a/./d1/d1f1' -> `b/./d1/d1f1'
`a/./d1/d1f2' -> `b/./d1/d1f2'
`a/./d2' -> `b/./d2'
`a/./d2/d2f1' -> `b/./d2/d2f1'
`a/./f1' -> `b/./f1'

$ find b | xargs ls -d1
b
b/d1
b/d1/d1f1
b/d1/d1f2
b/d2
b/d2/d2f1
b/d3
b/d3/d3f1
b/f1
b/f2

This is not 'overwriting' in the sense that the original
files and subdirectories of the destination are removed,
but actually it's more like 'merging a into b'.
Maybe that's what you want.

Have a nice day,
Berny