copy files in directory that don't exist

[Martin Corner]

Hi All,

Sorry for the stupid question, but it has been a long day at work in the UK.

I need to copy files from one directory to another, but if the file already exists on the destination directory then I don't want to overwrite.

I know this is simple but just can't seem to get it to work.

TIA

[Mark Greene_1 · Accepted solution]

cp -i will ask before overwriting.

Hope your day goes better!

mark

[Pete Randall]

Sue,

A for loop should work. Something like

for i in /dirname/*
do
if [ ` ls -ld /newdir/$i | wc -l` -ne 1 ]
then
cp $i /newdir
fi
done


Pete