How can I recursively copy a directory into another and replace only the files that have not changed?

Question

I am looking to do a specific copy in Fedora.

I have two folders:

• \'webroot\': holding ALL web files/images etc

• \'export\': folder cont

Answer 1

It might, but any time the corresponding files in export and webroot have the same content but different modification times, you'd wind up performing an unnecessary copy operation. You'd probably get slightly smarter behavior from rsync:

rsync -pr ./export /path/to/webroot

Besides, rsync can copy files from one host to another over an SSH connection, if you ever have a need to do that. Plus, it has a zillion options you can specify to tweak its behavior - look in the man page for details.

EDIT: with respect to your clarification about what you mean by preserving permissions: you'd probably want to leave off the -p option.