How do I copy a directory tree but not the files in Linux?

Question

I want to copy about 200 directories & subdirectories from one location to another but I don't want to copy the thousands of files within those directories. I am on Linux.

Note: I don't have enough space to copy everything then delete all the files.

Answer 1

Just found this:

rsync -a -f"+ */" -f"- *" source/ destination/

http://psung.blogspot.com/2008/05/copying-directory-trees-with-rsync.html

Answer 2

find some/dir -type d -print0 | rsync --files-from=/dev/stdin -0 ...

Answer 3

Another approach is with find and mkdir:

find SOURCE -type d -exec mkdir TARGET/{} \;

Just make sure TARGET already exists or use the -p option of mkdir.

Answer 4

You also can do :

find inputdir -type d | cpio -pdumv destdir

The power of simplicity ;)

Answer 5

Similarly, using (GNU) tar:

find some/dir -type d -print |
tar --no-recursion -T- -c -p -f- |
(cd another/dir && tar -x -p -f-)

You don't really need the -print0 on the find command line or the -0 on the rsync command line unless you have filenames that contain newline characters (which is possible but highly unlikely). Tar (and rsync, and cpio) read filenames line-by-line; using a NULL terminator is mostly useful with xargs, which normally reads whitespace separated filenames (and so does not handle files/directories with spaces in their names without -0).

Answer 6

(cd /home/user/source/; find -type d -print0) | xargs -0 mkdir -p

Answer 7

cp -al 

Would copy all files with hard links. Same structure, same permissions. (note: hard links, so no storage lost.)

Answer 8

ls -d */ @source: find . -type d -print0 >dirs.txt @destination: xargs -0 mkdir -p

This will cause both commands to use nulls as separators instead of whitespaces. Note that the order of -type d and -print0 is important!