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Copy folder structure (without files) from one location to another

Asked 2010-11-01T23:30:59.480
156

I want to create a clone of the structure of our multi-terabyte file server. I know that cp --parents can move a file and it's parent structure, but is there any way to copy the directory structure intact?

I want to copy to a linux system and our file server is CIFS mounted there.

linux file copy directory
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3 Answers

2

The following solution worked well for me in various environments:

sourceDir="some/directory"
targetDir="any/other/directory"

find "$sourceDir" -type d | sed -e "s?$sourceDir?$targetDir?" | xargs mkdir -p
answered 2013-07-22T16:07:51.583
1

If you can get access from a Windows machine, you can use xcopy with /T and /E to copy just the folder structure (the /E includes empty folders)

http://ss64.com/nt/xcopy.html

[EDIT!]

This one uses rsync to recreate the directory structure but without the files. http://psung.blogspot.com/2008/05/copying-directory-trees-with-rsync.html

Might actually be better :)

answered 2010-11-01T23:33:59.863
1

Substitute target_dir and source_dir with the appropriate values:

cd target_dir && (cd source_dir; find . -type d ! -name .) | xargs -i mkdir -p "{}"

Tested on OSX+Ubuntu.

answered 2012-08-31T23:59:00.760

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