In bash I need to do this:
take all files in a directory
copy them into an existing directory
How do I do this? I tried cp -r t1 t2 (both t1 and t2 are existing directories, t1 has files in it) but it created a directory called t1 inside t2, I don't want that, I need the files in t1 to go directly inside t2. How do I do this?
What you want is:
cp -R t1/. t2/
The dot at the end tells it to copy the contents of the current directory, not the directory itself. This method also includes hidden files and folders.
Assuming t1 is the folder with files in it, and t2 is the empty directory. What you want is something like this:
sudo cp -R t1/* t2/
Bear in mind, for the first example, t1 and t2 have to be the full paths, or relative paths (based on where you are). If you want, you can navigate to the empty folder (t2) and do this:
sudo cp -R t1/* ./
Or you can navigate to the folder with files (t1) and do this:
sudo cp -R ./* t2/
Note: The * sign (or wildcard) stands for all files and folders. The -R flag means recursively (everything inside everything).
For inside some directory, this will be use full as it copy all contents from "folder1" to new directory "folder2" inside some directory.
$(pwd) will get path for current directory.
Notice the dot (.) after folder1 to get all contents inside folder1
cp -r $(pwd)/folder1/. $(pwd)/folder2
This code with Flag "-R" copies perfectly all the contents of "folder1" to existing "folder2":
cp -R folder1/. folder2
Flag "-R" copies symbolic links as well but Flag "-r" skips symbolic links so Flag "-R" is better than Flag "-r".
-R, --dereference-recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory,
recursively, following all symbolic links.
-r, --recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all files in that directory,
recursively. Follow symbolic links on the command line, but skip symlinks
that are encountered recursively. Note that if no file operand is given,
grep searches the working directory. This is the same as the
‘--directories=recurse’ option.