Copying Only Directories With Files

Question

I am trying to copy files and the directory it is in to another location. I can find the path like this:

find ~/dim_import/* -type f ! -name xdir | cut -d '/' -f 5-10

which outputs

general/header.txt
scripts/test
scripts/tt

How do I copy these to another location? For example the new location would be

new/general/header.txt
new/scripts/test
new/scripts/tt

The issue is that there are more directories that are empty and I do not want to copy those, only the directories that have files in them and the files themselves.

NOTE: not using bash, using sh.

Answer 1

Here is a method that only uses POSIX shell features:

find ~/dim_import/* -type f ! -name xdir -exec sh -c '
  p=${1%/*}; 
  d=${p##*/}; 
  f=${1##*/}; 
  mkdir -p new/"$d"; 
  cp "$1" new/"$d"' -- {} \;

Answer 2

xargs should be available. You could use:

find ~/dim_import/* -type f ! -name xdir | xargs -I {} cp {} new/{}

Answer 3

Since you already know how to filter the files, then use recursive copy: cp -R

Or you could just use rsync with --prune-empty-dirs option.

rsync --exclude='*xdir*' --prune-empty-dirs ~/dim_import ~/new

Note: If you don't use trailing slash from source (like above's example) dim_import is also copied.

Answer 4

I ended up just writing to a file:

find ~/dim_import/* -type f ! -name xdir | cut -d '/' -f 5-6 > files

and then looping through the "files" file and creating the directories from that and then copying the files there.

while read line; do
  fileDir=`echo "$line" | cut -d '/' -f 1`    # get folder name
  fileName=`echo "$line" | cut -d '/' -f 2`   # get file name
  cd ~/"sr${srNum}"                           # go to SR folder

  # If proper directory doesn't exist, create
  if [ ! -d "$fileDir" ]; then 
    mkdir "$fileDir"
  fi

  # Copy file to respected directory
  cd $ROOT                                        # go back to dim_import
  cp "$fileDir/$fileName" ~/"sr$srNum/$fileDir"   # copy file to fileDir folder
  cd ~/"sr$srNum/$fileDir"                        # go to fileDir
  chmod u+w "$fileName"                  # mod the file for write access for changes
  cd $ROOT                                        # go back to dim_import
done < files