You can use cp -a to copy directory trees, but rsync can do the same and give you more flexibility. rsync supports a syntax for filter rules which specify which files and directories should and should not be copied.<\/p>\n
Examples<\/p>\n
Copy only the directory structure without copying any files:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The two -f arguments mean, respectively, “copy all directories” and then “do not copy anything else”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Copy only directories and Python files:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is really handy for replicating the general directory structure but only copying a subset of the files.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Copy everything but exclude .git directories:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of course, rsync also works great for copying files between machines, and it knows better than to transfer files that already exist on the destination. I use something similar to the above to do backups, copying my homedir but excluding stuff like caches that are not even worth copying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You can use cp -a to copy directory trees, but rsync can do the same and give you more flexibility. rsync supports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-info-on-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}