Copying files with dired preserving structure

Copying files with dired preserving structure

[Alberto Luaces]

Hi,

I want to classify some files contained in a directory hierarchy into
several groups, depending on their content.

So far I do a 'find-dired' to get a list of the available files and then
I mark each group by grepping into the files
(dired-mark-files-containing-regexp).

The problem is that if I try now to move those files elsewhere, the
hierarchy is lost, and besides that, files with the same name are
overwritten.

I have tried to "tar" the marked files to preserve the hierarchy, but
this approach is somewhat fragile, as I tend to use incorrect tar flags
and I risk corrupting my work when updating some of those "groups".

I am looking for a way to move marked files to a different place
preserving the directory structure with dired.

Thanks,

-- 
Alberto

Re: Copying files with dired preserving structure

[Martin]

Alberto Luaces writes:

> Hi,
>
> I want to classify some files contained in a directory hierarchy into
> several groups, depending on their content.
>
> So far I do a 'find-dired' to get a list of the available files and then
> I mark each group by grepping into the files
> (dired-mark-files-containing-regexp).
>
> The problem is that if I try now to move those files elsewhere, the
> hierarchy is lost, and besides that, files with the same name are
> overwritten.
>
> I have tried to "tar" the marked files to preserve the hierarchy, but
> this approach is somewhat fragile, as I tend to use incorrect tar flags
> and I risk corrupting my work when updating some of those "groups".
>
> I am looking for a way to move marked files to a different place
> preserving the directory structure with dired.
>
> Thanks,

Hi,

you may want to use dired-do-(async-)shell-command with
"cp ? --parents <target directory>".

Martin

Re: Copying files with dired preserving structure

[Alberto Luaces]

Martin writes:

> Alberto Luaces writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I want to classify some files contained in a directory hierarchy into
>> several groups, depending on their content.
>>
>> So far I do a 'find-dired' to get a list of the available files and then
>> I mark each group by grepping into the files
>> (dired-mark-files-containing-regexp).
>>
>> The problem is that if I try now to move those files elsewhere, the
>> hierarchy is lost, and besides that, files with the same name are
>> overwritten.
>>
>> I have tried to "tar" the marked files to preserve the hierarchy, but
>> this approach is somewhat fragile, as I tend to use incorrect tar flags
>> and I risk corrupting my work when updating some of those "groups".
>>
>> I am looking for a way to move marked files to a different place
>> preserving the directory structure with dired.
>>
>> Thanks,
>
> Hi,
>
> you may want to use dired-do-(async-)shell-command with
> "cp ? --parents <target directory>".

Great! It does the trick!

Thank you, Martin.

-- 
Alberto