I want to copy a directory into another directory.
For example, cp -r dir1 dir2 copies the contents of dir1 into dir2. I want to copy dir1 itself into dir2 so that if I ls dir2 it will output dir1 and not whatever was inside of dir1.
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3 Answers
Just do as you did:
cp -r dir1 dir2
and you will have dir1 (with its content as well) inside dir2. Try if you don't believe ;-).
The command that would copy content of dir1 into dir2 is:
cp -r dir1/* dir2
- I tried it out exactly so and it worked. Then I went back to my original location and tried it, didn't work. Turns out bash's auto-complete suggested
cp -r System\ Volume\ Information testonly copies the contents, but if I manually type it out ascp -r "System Volume Information" testthen it copies the directory itself and not just the contents.Eric Majerus– Eric Majerus2014-08-10 18:00:29 +00:00Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 18:00 - I'll mark this answer as accepted because it is correct. The actual cause of the problem though was the spaces as described above.Eric Majerus– Eric Majerus2014-08-10 18:23:04 +00:00Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 18:23
- 2@EricMajerus Your explanation of the cause does not make sense. I have added a new answer, that may explain things, it may be that the order of your tests, and not cleaning up after the first test cased the second to behave differently.ctrl-alt-delor– ctrl-alt-delor2014-08-10 21:35:33 +00:00Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 21:35
Look at the manual for cp (also mv):
cp [OPTION]... [-T] SOURCE DEST cp [OPTION]... SOURCE... DIRECTORY cp [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY SOURCE... If you do cp a b then if b does not exist you get cp -T a b, but if b exists and is a directory you get cp -t b a, else error.
Example
mkdir empty cd empty mkdir a touch a/a-file cp -r a b #this creates b a copy of a cp -r a b #this time it makes a copy of a called a in b (b/a) Example 2
mkdir empty cd empty mkdir a touch a/a-file cp -r -T a b #this creates b, a copy of a cp -r -T a b #updates b (no effect in this case) Example 3
mkdir empty cd empty mkdir a touch a/a-file mkdir b cp -r -t b a #copy a into b cp -r -t b a #updates a/b (no effect in this case) 
- thank you so much for the examples, resolved 15 min of painful debugging for me this morning!!J-Dizzle– J-Dizzle2018-02-24 17:49:21 +00:00Commented Feb 24, 2018 at 17:49
Also, make sure that the first argument (the directory you want to copy) doesn't end with a forward-slash character /. Some versions of cp (for example on MacOS) treat it as /* and copy just the contents of the directory in such case, not the whole directory. And the forward-slash is usually added when you auto-complete the directory name using the Tab key.
Copy the whole directory dir1 into the directory dir2:
cp -r dir1 dir2 Copy the contents of the directory dir1 into the directory dir2:
cp -r dir1/ dir2 It's equivalent to:
cp -r dir1/* dir2 