Copying/Moving folders where destination folder already exists

Question

I am writing a bash script to copy/move a folder called "folder" to a directory that already contains "folder" and I would like the contents to be merged.

I am attempting to use a solution from this question:

Merging folders with mv?

cp -rl source/folder destination
rm -r source/folder

If i type the first line in the terminal, source "folder" and destination "folder" are merged as expected.

However, When i run the script with the line in it, instead of merging the folders the destination now contains two folders; "folder" and "blank", where "blank" has the contents of the source "folder" in it.

What do you mean by "blank named folder"? The content of `source/folder` was not copied to `destination/folder`? — Freddy, Nov 03 '19 at 01:46
After i run the script, destination now contains two folders; "folder" and "blank", where "blank" has the contents of the source "folder" in it. — puyanera, Nov 03 '19 at 01:51
1. are you using variables to hold the source and destination directory names? 2. if so, are you double-quoting the variables when you use them (i.e. `cp "$source" "$destination"` rather than `cp $source $destination` - the latter, without the double-quotes, will fail in all sorts of cases that the former, with quotes, will handle without problem). see [Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/131766/why-does-my-shell-script-choke-on-whitespace-or-other-special-characters) — cas, Nov 03 '19 at 01:52
@cas It's a very short script so currently the source and destination are hard coded: cp -rl /volume1/Sync/TVSync/* /volume1/Sync/TempSync/ — puyanera, Nov 03 '19 at 01:56
ok, so not a whitespace issue then. what do you mean by "blank named folder"? — cas, Nov 03 '19 at 02:08
@cas when i type the first line in the terminal, source "folder" and destination "folder" are merged. When i run the script with the line in it, instead of merging the folders the destination now contains two folders; "folder" and "blank", where "blank" has the contents of the source "folder" in it. — puyanera, Nov 03 '19 at 10:55

polpak · Answer 1 · 2019-11-03T01:50:18.957

0

To append SOURCE to DESTINATION to become SOUCE+DESTINATION is more complicated (for self), look up

 man append

You might try:

    cp  --recursive  --preserve --update  SOURCE DESTINATION

use "--preserve" to preserve the specified attributes (default: mode,ownership,timestamps), if possible additional attributes: context, links, xattr, all

use "--recursive" to copy directories recursively

use "--update" to copy when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing.

For help in terminal:

   cp --help

or

  man cp

When terminal works, try it in your bash script

.

edited Nov 03 '19 at 01:50

answered Nov 03 '19 at 01:46

polpak

11
2

Thanks @polpak , the odd thing is that the first line works as expected in the terminal but not in the script. I'll edit the question to mention that. – puyanera Nov 03 '19 at 01:47
From help -l, --link hard link files instead of copying -L, --dereference always follow symbolic links in SOURCE – polpak Nov 03 '19 at 02:23

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 30 '23 at 22:32

I think that a better way of doing this would be to use a better tool.

rsync -avhP --remove-source-files "source/folder" destination

-a is for archiving (keep user/group, modes, etc. in tact)

-v just for verbosity, so you can watch what it's doing

-h because I like Human Readable info

-P so rsync will pick up on partial transfers, just in case

--remove-source-files will remove everything that rsync transfers

I find that I often have to kludge empty folder removal as housekeeping:

find source/folder -type d -exec rmdir {} \;

I prepend that in zsh with repeat 10 and it cleans 10 levels deep of empty folders. :-)

Copying/Moving folders where destination folder already exists

2 Answers2