How to have the cp command create any necessary folders for copying a file to a destination [duplicate]

Answer 1

I didn't know you could do that with cp.

You can do it with mkdir ..

mkdir -p /var/path/to/your/dir

EDIT See lhunath's answer for incorporating cp.

Answer 2

 mkdir -p `dirname /nosuchdirectory/hi.txt` && cp -r urls-resume /nosuchdirectory/hi.txt

Answer 3

For those that are on Mac OSX, perhaps the easiest way to work around this is to use ditto (only on the mac, AFAIK, though). It will create the directory structure that is missing in the destination.

For instance, I did this

ditto 6.3.2/6.3.2/macosx/bin/mybinary ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.2/

where ~/work did not contain the binaries directory before I ran the command.

I thought rsync should work similarly, but it seems it only works for one level of missing directories. That is,

rsync 6.3.3/6.3.3/macosx/bin/mybinary ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.3/

worked, because ~/work/binaries/macosx existed but not ~/work/binaries/macosx/6.3.2/

Answer 4

rsync is work!

#file:
rsync -aqz _vimrc ~/.vimrc

#directory:
rsync -aqz _vim/ ~/.vim

Answer 5

cp -Rvn /source/path/* /destination/path/
cp: /destination/path/any.zip: No such file or directory

It will create no existing paths in destination, if path have a source file inside. This dont create empty directories.

A moment ago i've seen xxxxxxxx: No such file or directory, because i run out of free space. without error message.

with ditto:

ditto -V /source/path/* /destination/path
ditto: /destination/path/any.zip: No space left on device

once freed space cp -Rvn /source/path/* /destination/path/ works as expected

Answer 6

One can also use the command find:

find ./ -depth -print | cpio -pvd newdirpathname