How do I merge one directory into another using Bash?

Question

I'm looking for shell script that merge files from one directory into another.

Sample:

html/   a/     b.html   index.html  html_new/   a/     b2.html     b.html 

Usage:

./mergedirs.sh html html_new 

Result:

html/   a/     b.html     b2.html   index.html 

html/a/b.html was replaced by html_new/a/b.html
html/a/b2.html was copied from html_new/a/b2.html
html/index.html was kept untouched

Answer 1

cp -RT source/ destination/ 

All files and directories in source will end up in destination. For example, source/file1 will be copied to destination/file1.

The -T flag stops source/file1 from being copied to destination/source/file1 instead. (Unfortunately, cp on macOS does not support the -T flag.)

Answer 2

You probably just want cp -R $1/* $2/ — that's a recursive copy.

(If there might be hidden files (those whose names begin with a dot), you should prefix that command with shopt -s dotglob; to be sure they get matched.)