mjhjmtu

On Centos 7, when I use the command:

 cp -rsf /path/of/source /path/of/target

When the target directory exists, files would go to /path/of/target/source.

How can I avoid that?

EDIT:

1. source and target are directories.


2. Symlinks meet my environment needs. I need them to be symlink in order to save storage.

For example:

1. mkdir /home/admin/test; mkdir /home/admin/test/1; touch /home/admin/test/1/1.txt;


2. mkdir /home/admin/test2; mkdir /home/admin/test2/1; touch /home/admin/test2/1/1.txt;


3. cp -rsf /home/admin/test/1 /home/admin/test2/1


4. ls /home/admin/test2/1

result is:

drwxrwxr-x 2 admin admin 4096 Sep 16 15:57 1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin 0 Sep 16 15:56 1.txt


I wanted this result:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 admin admin 24 Sep 16 16:03 1.txt -> /home/admin/test/1/1.txt

It means the source directory itself is copied within the target, but I wanted its content to be copied (Just like when the target directory doesn't exist)

The solution is to add -T
according to man

-T, --no-target-directory
treat DEST as a normal file

cp -rsfT /path/of/source /path/of/target

if the target directory exists it copies symlinks in it. The benefit is if there are other files in target, they remain untouched.