How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command

Question

Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command ?

I tried the following , which did not work:

cp file1 /foo/ /bar         


        

Answer 1

For example if you are in the parent directory of you destination folders you can do:

for i in $(ls); do cp sourcefile $i; done

Answer 2

Not using cp per se, but...

This came up for me in the context of copying lots of Gopro footage off of a (slow) SD card to three (slow) USB drives. I wanted to read the data only once, because it took forever. And I wanted it recursive.

$ tar cf - src | tee >( cd dest1 ; tar xf - ) >( cd dest2 ; tar xf - ) | ( cd dest3 ; tar xf - )

(And you can add more of those >() sections if you want more outputs.)

I haven't benchmarked that, but it's definitely a lot faster than cp-in-a-loop (or a bunch of parallel cp invocations).

Answer 3

Essentially equivalent to the xargs answer, but in case you want parallel execution:

parallel -q cp file1 ::: /foo/ /bar/

So, for example, to copy file1 into all subdirectories of current folder (including recursion):

parallel -q cp file1 ::: `find -mindepth 1 -type d`

N.B.: This probably only conveys any noticeable speed gains for very specific use cases, e.g. if each target directory is a distinct disk.

It is also functionally similar to the '-P' argument for xargs.

Answer 4

I like to copy a file into multiple directories as such: cp file1 /foo/; cp file1 /bar/; cp file1 /foo2/; cp file1 /bar2/ And copying a directory into other directories: cp -r dir1/ /foo/; cp -r dir1/ /bar/; cp -r dir1/ /foo2/; cp -r dir1/ /bar2/

I know it's like issuing several commands, but it works well for me when I want to type 1 line and walk away for a while.

Answer 5

Another way is to use cat and tee as follows:

cat <source file> | tee <destination file 1> | tee <destination file 2> [...] > <last destination file>

I think this would be pretty inefficient though, since the job would be split among several processes (one per destination) and the hard drive would be writing several files at once over different parts of the platter. However if you wanted to write a file out to several different drives, this method would probably be pretty efficient (as all copies could happen concurrently).

Answer 6

No, cp can copy multiple sources but will only copy to a single destination. You need to arrange to invoke cp multiple times - once per destination - for what you want to do; using, as you say, a loop or some other tool.