cp -r without hidden files

Question

I have two directories and one is empty.

The first directory has many sub directories with hidden files. When I cp -r content from first directory to the second one, the hidden files gets copied too. Any solutions to escape them?

it's doable, but removing them after the copy might be simpler — Karoly Horvath, Jul 19 '12 at 08:50
yeah, but coping the hidden files to other locations is a security hazard in my case. — Rahul, Jul 19 '12 at 09:26

Eugene Yarmash · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-19T11:34:00.303

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You can use rsync instead of cp:

rsync -av --exclude=".*" src dest

This excludes hidden files and directories. If you only want to exclude hidden directories, add a slash to the pattern:

rsync -av --exclude=".*/" src dest

edited Oct 19 '21 at 11:34

answered Jul 19 '12 at 08:54

Eugene Yarmash

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Any overheads when compared with cp? – Rahul Jul 19 '12 at 09:25
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@Rahul It did not occur to me to benchmark it, but I think you shouldn't worry about that – Eugene Yarmash Jul 19 '12 at 10:44
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It works cool! Thanks man! Just for information, rsync would be great when file size is big, but equal to cp in case the smaller files. – Rahul Jul 19 '12 at 11:06
rsync is much powerful than cp in all aspects.so you should use rsync as your file transferring tool – focus zheng Jan 27 '21 at 06:49
Doesn't seem to ignore hidden files in subdirectories (on macOS Big Sur, at least) – ndtreviv Oct 07 '21 at 13:35
@ndtreviv Just tried it, works as expected with both Apple shipped `rsync` and the one installed with `brew`. – Eugene Yarmash Oct 19 '21 at 11:23
@EugeneYarmash Weird. I'm getting a .git directory in a subdirectory coming across with this command. ‍♂️ – ndtreviv Oct 19 '21 at 14:47

score 42 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '12 at 08:51

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You can do

cp -r SRC_DIR/* DEST_DIR

to exclude all .files and .dirs in the SRC_DIR level, but still it would copy any hidden files in the next level of sub-directories.

answered Jul 19 '12 at 08:51

Tuxdude

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That's exactly the problem.. :) – Rahul Jul 19 '12 at 11:07
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But it works for GIT-Repos, if you don't wan't to copy the whole GIT-Index in .git/ ... – Sedat Kilinc Aug 14 '15 at 10:02
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I +'d this answer because this is the solution I was looking for. I don't want to exclude all invisibles up the tree, just the invisibles at the root level! – l008com Mar 13 '18 at 05:56
Another variant `cp SOURCE/[!.]* TARGET`. – Carel Aug 10 '19 at 19:33

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 26 '17 at 06:00

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rsync has "-C" option

http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html

Example:

rsync -vazC  dir1 dir2

edited Jul 26 '17 at 06:00

Tamil Selvan C

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answered Jul 19 '12 at 09:10

slitvinov

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You are right. I tried **mkdir -p dir1/subdir; touch dir1/subdir/.cvs; rsync -avzC dir1 dir2** – slitvinov Jul 19 '12 at 09:42
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rsync -av --exclude=".*" src dest works great. Refer the answer above by eugene. Thanks anyway! :) – Rahul Jul 19 '12 at 11:07

SivolcC · Answer 4 · 2022-10-16T13:06:30.513

I came across the same need when I wanted to copy the files contained in a git repo, but excluding the .git folder, while using git bash.

If you don't have access to rsync, you can replicate the behavior of --exclude=".*" by using the find command along with xargs:

find ./src_dir -type f -not -path '*/.*' | xargs cp --parents -t ./dest_dir

To give more details:

find ./src_dir -type f -not -path '*/.*' will find all files in src_dir excluding the ones where the path contain a . at the beginning of a file or folder.
xargs cp --parents -t ./dest_dir will copy the files found to dest_dir, recreating the folder hierarchy thanks to the --parents argument.

Note: This will not copy empty folders. And will effectively exclude all hidden files and folders from being copied.

Link to relevant doc:

https://linux.die.net/man/1/cp

https://linux.die.net/man/1/find

cp -r without hidden files

4 Answers4