I have a directory with ~100 Gb. I need to copy this directory to other place skipping specific folders (there is a lot of them). The following is a wrong code to demonstrate my needs.
$ cp -r ~/directory_to_copy /path/to/copy --skip=foo --skip=bar There is an example of result this command. Original directory tree is
~/directory_to_copy aaa foo doo bar bbb ccc ddd bar eee Copied tree is
/path/to/copy/ aaa doo bbb ccc ddd eee How to write command for my purposes?
You want rsync:
rsync -va --exclude=foo --exclude=bar ~/directory_to_copy /path/to/copy --exclude is used to exclude unwanted files or directories.
-v makes rsync verbose (optional).
-a tells rsync to copy recursively and preserve file attributes. This is optional but, if you don't use -a, you likely want to use -r to copy recursively.
For more complex requirements, both exclude and include options can be specified. It is even possible to change the exclude/include settings from one directory to another by specifying the -F option and placing .rsync-filter files in various locations in the source directory hierarchy. man rsync has details.
-a has the same effect as a bunch of other flags, one of which is -r(--recursive) which is not optional here. -r. you can use find for that
find -depth ! -wholename '*foo*' ! -wholename '*bar*' -exec cp --parents '{}' /target/dir/ \; note that you will a) need -depth to make sure you first find the directories that need to be omitted and b) use the --parents option to cp to create the full path while copying.
This will however also skip empty folders as -r in cp cannot be used as then ALL filed would be copied once find comes to ./firstDIR .
path, wholename is less portable too.. ! could also be avoided with -prune like in ... -path '*foo*' -o -path '*bar*' -prune -o -exec ...