Peng Yu wrote: > Suppose I have directory a and b, the following command will copy the > content of a to b/a, rather than overwrite the directory 'b' by the > directory 'a'. I'm wondering if there is an option to overwrite 'b'? > > cp -r a b
you mean something like this? cp -r a/. b Have a look with cp's option -v to see what it does: $ mkdir a a/d1 a/d2 b b/d1 b/d3 $ touch a/f1 a/d1/d1f1 a/d1/d1f2 a/d2/d2f1 $ touch b/f1 b/f2 b/d1/d1f1 b/d1/d1f2 b/d3/d3f1 $ cp -rv a/. b `a/./d1/d1f1' -> `b/./d1/d1f1' `a/./d1/d1f2' -> `b/./d1/d1f2' `a/./d2' -> `b/./d2' `a/./d2/d2f1' -> `b/./d2/d2f1' `a/./f1' -> `b/./f1' $ find b | xargs ls -d1 b b/d1 b/d1/d1f1 b/d1/d1f2 b/d2 b/d2/d2f1 b/d3 b/d3/d3f1 b/f1 b/f2 This is not 'overwriting' in the sense that the original files and subdirectories of the destination are removed, but actually it's more like 'merging a into b'. Maybe that's what you want. Have a nice day, Berny
