How do I copy a directory tree but not the files in Linux?

Question

I want to copy about 200 directories & subdirectories from one location to another but I don't want to copy the thousands of files within those directories. I am on Linux.

Note: I don't have enough space to copy everything then delete all the files.

score 27 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 20 '10 at 22:10

27

Just found this:

rsync -a -f"+ */" -f"- *" source/ destination/

http://psung.blogspot.com/2008/05/copying-directory-trees-with-rsync.html

answered Nov 20 '10 at 22:10

Kyle West

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I prefer this syntax `rsync -a --include='*/' --exclude='*' ${source} ${destination}`. – Trevor Boyd Smith Jun 01 '17 at 20:11

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 20 '10 at 21:33

9

find some/dir -type d -print0 | rsync --files-from=/dev/stdin -0 ...

answered Nov 20 '10 at 21:33

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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It would be useful to add what is `-0` and what is the ellipsis. The former, I guess, is for rsync to read the output of find's `print0`. – Yaroslav Nikitenko Nov 04 '20 at 18:11

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered May 10 '14 at 12:10

6

Another approach is with find and mkdir:

find SOURCE -type d -exec mkdir TARGET/{} \;

Just make sure TARGET already exists or use the -p option of mkdir.

answered May 10 '14 at 12:10

Panos Rontogiannis

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Pilou · Answer 4 · 2011-04-05T09:43:36.100

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You also can do :

find inputdir -type d | cpio -pdumv destdir

The power of simplicity ;)

edited Apr 05 '11 at 09:43

answered Apr 05 '11 at 09:37

Pilou

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In the beginning of `man cpio` it says: "\_\_WARNING\_\_ The cpio utility is considered LEGACY based on POSIX specification. Users are encouraged to use other archiving tools for archive creation." – Yaroslav Nikitenko Nov 04 '20 at 18:08

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 05 '11 at 21:24

Similarly, using (GNU) tar:

find some/dir -type d -print |
tar --no-recursion -T- -c -p -f- |
(cd another/dir && tar -x -p -f-)

You don't really need the -print0 on the find command line or the -0 on the rsync command line unless you have filenames that contain newline characters (which is possible but highly unlikely). Tar (and rsync, and cpio) read filenames line-by-line; using a NULL terminator is mostly useful with xargs, which normally reads whitespace separated filenames (and so does not handle files/directories with spaces in their names without -0).

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 28 '17 at 22:10

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(cd /home/user/source/; find -type d -print0) | xargs -0 mkdir -p

answered Jul 28 '17 at 22:10

SergioAraujo

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SvennD · Answer 7 · 2015-11-28T09:52:24.057

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cp -al

Would copy all files with hard links. Same structure, same permissions. (note: hard links, so no storage lost.)

edited Nov 28 '15 at 09:52

answered Nov 17 '15 at 14:22

SvennD

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It is not possible to create hard links across filesystem boundaries – MountainX Jun 09 '16 at 01:32
True, but it wasn't said that it was across filesystem ... – SvennD Jun 09 '16 at 11:48

score -1 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 17 '16 at 08:54

-1

ls -d */ @source: find . -type d -print0 >dirs.txt @destination: xargs -0 mkdir -p

This will cause both commands to use nulls as separators instead of whitespaces. Note that the order of -type d and -print0 is important!

answered Aug 17 '16 at 08:54

Ashish Karpe

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This is not clear and seems incorrect. It seems that the `@source` and `@destination` are indications to the reader, but even so this cannot work. – Law29 Oct 02 '18 at 05:24

How do I copy a directory tree but not the files in Linux?

8 Answers8