Linux cp command to copy a folder to current directory
I am wondering if there is an identical command for copying a folder to current directory like it did using the old MS-DOS. Let's say my current directory location is:
/var/www/
I have folders and files at:
/home/hope/subfolder/docs/
/home/hope/subfolder/images/
/home/hope/subfolder/.config
/home/hope/subfolder/readme.txt
I know that the following command:
cp -rT /home/hope/subfolder .
will copy all the files (even dot hidden files) and folders within the "subfolder" folder to the current directory, so the result will be:
/var/www/docs/
/var/www/images/
/var/www/.config
/var/www/readme.txt
Looks like the command to that to copy the source folder to the current location is:
cp -rT /home/hope/subfolder ./subfolder
although this is fine, I find it that sometimes I will make mistakes for complicated folder names for the destination, so is there a way to use a command like:
cp -rT /home/hope/subfolder .
or even like this
cp -rT /home/hope/subfolder /var/www/.
to have the following result:
/var/www/subfolder/docs/
/var/www/subfolder/images/
/var/www/subfolder/.config
/var/www/subfolder/readme.txt
Thank you.
Answer
Just omit the -T parameter, as that's what prevents the command from working properly:
cp -r /home/hope/subfolder .
The -T parameter treats the target argument as a file, so no copying will be performed at all if that is actually a directory.
A friendly reminder: virtually all Unix commands have a --help command line argument that is worth trying out in case of a trouble :)