diff script to copy files to other dir when not exists

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have two directories that are mostly the same:

dir1
dir2

Is there an easy way to take the output of diff and copy files from dir1 that do not exist in dir2 - but copy them to the same path (many nested directories).

am only trying to copy files in dir1 that do not exist in dir2.

thanks

2

But what do you mean by:

?

3

GNU cp has the -u option:

   -u, --update
              copy only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is miss-
              ing

It doesn't match exactly your requirement, of course.

4

I do not want to copy the entire directory.

I just want to copy only those files that exist in dir1 to dir2 with the same path.
any ideas or help there?

---------- Post updated at 01:58 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:57 PM ----------

so if:

dir1/path1/path2/path3/file_exists.txt is here in dir1 but not dir2, then I want to copy file_exists.txt over to dir2 with the same path: like: dir2/path1/path2/path3/file_exists.txt

---------- Post updated at 01:59 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:58 PM ----------

so if:

dir1/path1/path2/path3/file_exists.txt is here in dir1 but not dir2, then I want to copy file_exists.txt over to dir2 with the same path: like: dir2/path1/path2/path3/file_exists.txt

5

If you have rsync installed, you can go that route. It'll only copy new files in dir1 to dir2. Just cd into dir1 and run "rsync -avz --stats * /tmp/dir2" and it should only copy files that do not already exist in dir2.

Hope this helps.

6

OK, I will try that. Also another requirement is that I want to skip certain meta-data directories like "CVS/". Is there a way to exclude a list of directories?

Also I do not want to copy files that differ, just files that do not exist in one, that do exist in the other. What flag controls this behaviour?