UNIX, how to maintain directory structure?

Question

I want to create an empty directory structure bar2 from a nonempty directory tree bar1. Both bar1 and bar2 are at the same hierarchical level. How can I use mkdir in an efficient manner so that intermediate directories are automatically created?

To create a directory list from bar1 with find and order it if necessary.
Using awk, remove all branches from the list so that I can run `mkdir only on the leaves.
Run mkdir with the list to replicate the directory structure of bar1

Why is identifying only leaves necessary? – Jé Queue Nov 10 '10 at 17:12 — Jé Queue, Nov 10 '10 at 17:12

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 10 '10 at 17:00

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cd bar1
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p '../bar2/{}' \;

answered Nov 10 '10 at 17:00

spacedentist

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This doesn't remove the leaves, it runs mkdir for each directory – Michael Mrozek Nov 10 '10 at 17:07
Er. s/leaves/branches/ in my comment. That is, for the directory structure bar2/a/b/c it will run three mkdirs instead of one – Michael Mrozek Nov 10 '10 at 17:14
Thanks for all your answers and comments. They were very helpful. – HelloWorld Nov 11 '10 at 01:02

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

2

The hard part of your question (how to list only leaf directories) has been asked before on SO. You can use the find/awk combo there and run mkdir -p on each result:

[bar1] $ find . -type d | sort | awk '$0 !~ last {print last} {last=$0} END {print last}' | xargs -Ix mkdir -p ../bar2/x

edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Community

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answered Nov 10 '10 at 17:09

Michael Mrozek

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 10 '10 at 17:33

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You might want to use rsync instead:

rsync -r -f '+ */' -f '- *' bar1 bar2

which is, more verbose:

rsync --verbose --recursive --include '*/' --exclude '*' bar1 bar2

answered Nov 10 '10 at 17:33

altblue

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UNIX, how to maintain directory structure?

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