复制没有文件的目录结构

Question

Hello i am trying to make a script which takes two arguments (names of directories) and copies the structure of the first into the other.

This is my code:

cd $1 && find . -type d -exec mkdir -p /$2/{} \;

when i run the script i dont get any errors but nothing happens. What am i doing wrong please help thank you.

edit: the script is saved in home and both directories are also in home (~). i run the script in terminal:

sudo bash DN1c.sh dir1 dir2

first directory has multiple subdirectories and the second directory is empty

Answer 1

If the target is a relative path your command will get into an infinite loop. Below one doesn't have that problem.

find "$1/." -type d -exec bash -c '
mkdir -p "${@/*\/.\//"$0"/}"' "$2" {} +

• Uses $1/. as the starting point so that /./ marks where source path ends in each path.
• Relies on bash's pattern substitution PE; "${@/*\/.\//"$0"/}" replaces the longest match of */./ with the target path in each member of $@ (ie paths selected) and expands to the resultant list.
• Abuses $0 a bit but it won't cause any harm.

Handling of positional parameters is left to OP.

Answer 2

You could use rsync to copy files and/or directories.

To copy directories only, set --max-size=0 and no files will be copied.

Example:

rsync -r -n -v --max-size=0 src_path/ dest_path

       ^                                        recursive
          ^                                     dry run - nothing copied
             ^                                  verbose
                     ^                          no files
                              ^                 src path
                                    ^           use a trailing / if you don't 
                                                want the src_path created
                                                at dest
                                           ^    dest path