How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command

Bonzo_13523 0
Viewed 166805

Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command ?

I tried the following , which did not work: 

cp file1 /foo/ /bar/
cp file1 {/foo/,/bar}

I know it's possible using a for loop, or find. But is it possible using the gnu cp command?

shell linux bash
22 Answers

You can't do this with cp alone but you can combine cp with xargs:

echo dir1 dir2 dir3 | xargs -n 1 cp file1

Will copy file1 to dir1, dir2, and dir3. xargs will call cp 3 times to do this, see the man page for xargs for details.

Robert_Gamble_252220

No, cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination. You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do; using, as you say, a loop or some other tool.

user_118340

Wildcards also work with Roberts code

echo ./fs*/* | xargs -n 1 cp test
user_5904310

Using a bash script

DESTINATIONPATH[0]="xxx/yyy"
DESTINATIONPATH[1]="aaa/bbb"
                ..
DESTINATIONPATH[5]="MainLine/USER"
NumberOfDestinations=6

for (( i=0; i<NumberOfDestinations; i++))
    do
        cp  SourcePath/fileName.ext ${DESTINATIONPATH[$i]}

    done
exit
user_103015050

If all your target directories match a path expression — like they're all subdirectories of path/to — then just use find in combination with cp like this:

find ./path/to/* -type d -exec cp [file name] {} \;

That's it.

user_41245740
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