I'm trying to write a Bash script that will overwrite an existing directory. I have a directory foo/
and I am trying to overwrite bar/
with it. But when I do this:
cp -Rf foo/ bar/
a new bar/foo/
directory is created. I don't want that. There are two files in foo/
; a
and b
. There are files with same names in bar/
as well. I want the foo/a
and foo/b
to replace bar/a
and bar/b
.
You can do this using -T
option in cp
.
See Man page for cp
.
-T, --no-target-directory
treat DEST as a normal file
So as per your example, following is the file structure.
$ tree test
test
|-- bar
| |-- a
| `-- b
`-- foo
|-- a
`-- b
2 directories, 4 files
You can see the clear difference when you use -v
for Verbose.
When you use just -R
option.
$ cp -Rv foo/ bar/
`foo/' -> `bar/foo'
`foo/b' -> `bar/foo/b'
`foo/a' -> `bar/foo/a'
$ tree
|-- bar
| |-- a
| |-- b
| `-- foo
| |-- a
| `-- b
`-- foo
|-- a
`-- b
3 directories, 6 files
When you use the option -T
it overwrites the contents, treating the destination like a normal file and not directory.
$ cp -TRv foo/ bar/
`foo/b' -> `bar/b'
`foo/a' -> `bar/a'
$ tree
|-- bar
| |-- a
| `-- b
`-- foo
|-- a
`-- b
2 directories, 4 files
This should solve your problem.