Jamie,
I understand this. However, this isn't what Richard said.
The source/* causes the shell to glob the "non hidden" files and pass a list of files to copy. The source/. causes the shell to pass the "specified" directory and is equivalent to source/ without specifying the period. The -r means recursive so that any directories encountered in the list of directories are read and also copied. So if the list globbed by source/* contains a directory and that directory contains "hidden" files those "hidden" files will also be copied. If you want to retain the dates, permissions, owner and group you also need to use -p in the copy command or use -a (a gnu feature) to mean both -r and -p.
Earnie
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Jamie Holly hovercrafter@earthlink.net wrote:
It depends on how the command is invoked:
cp -r source/* destination/
That won't copy hidden files and directories.
cp -r source/. destination/
That will get the hidden files and directories.
Jamie Holly http://www.intoxination.net http://www.hollyit.net
On 12/24/2012 11:25 AM, Earnie Boyd wrote:
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Richard Damon wrote:
Note that cp does not copy "hidden" files (files that begin with .) by default. Since you specified /var/www/drupal/ (with the trailing /) it only selected the "normal" files in that directory. I think if you had specified the source as /var/www/drupal (with without the slash) then you get the hidden files.
I've never heard this before and really do not believe you based on experience. Can you please point us to the documentation that states that?
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