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.

Solution 1

Just found this:

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

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

Solution 2

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

Solution 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.

Solution 4

You also can do :

find inputdir -type d | cpio -pdumv destdir

The power of simplicity ;)

Solution 5

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

View more solutions

Comments

[Manos Vajasan]

It is not possible to create hard links across filesystem boundaries

[SvennD]

True, but it wasn't said that it was across filesystem ...

[Trevor Boyd Smith]

I prefer this syntax rsync -a --include='*/' --exclude='*' ${source} ${destination}.

[Law29]

This is not clear and seems incorrect. It seems that the @source and @destination are indications to the reader, but even so this cannot work.

[Yaroslav Nikitenko]

In the beginning of man cpio it says: "__WARNING__ The cpio utility is considered LEGACY based on POSIX specification. Users are encouraged to use other archiving tools for archive creation."

[Yaroslav Nikitenko]

It would be useful to add what is -0 and what is the ellipsis. The former, I guess, is for rsync to read the output of find's print0.