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Suppose I have this structure for folder0 and subfolders and files in it.

 folder0 subfolder01 file011 file012 subfolder02 file021 file01 file02

I want to copy all files in main folder folder0 to somewhere else, such that all file be in one directory? How Can I do that? I used

cp --recursive folder0address targetfolderaddress

But subfolders copied to target folder. I just want all files in directory and sub directories not folders. I mean something like the below in target folder:

targetfolder file011 file012 file021 file01 file02
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3 Answers 3

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16

Use find:

find folder0 -type f -exec cp {} targetfolder \;

With GNU coreutils you can do it more efficiently:

find folder0 -type f -exec cp -t targetfolder {} +

The former version runs cp for each file copied, while the latter runs cp only once.

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    Can you please add explanation of why the GNU variant is more efficient? Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 18:22
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    @codeforester Running cp once vs. running it for each file. -t is needed because find ... -exec cp {} targetfolder + is invalid syntax ({} must come at the end). Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 18:29
  • Haha! Thanks. You saved me. It works :) ... but what \; do at end of first? Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 19:03
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    @SirSaleh It marks the end of the -execed command. Commented Mar 16, 2017 at 7:56
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With zsh, thanks to ** for recursive globbing and the glob qualifier . to match only regular files:

cp -p folder0/**/*(.) targetfolder
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1

Or using xargs

 find folder0 -type f | xargs -I {} cp -v {} targetfolder;

Use -v to show what is hapenning.

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