Re: New feature request for cp to flatten directory

[Todd Andrews]

Thu  12-13-07  07:45 am

Thanks to everyone who replied! I should have explained more fully my 
reasons for making the suggestion:

1) The command line using find gets a bit complicated when you need to 
take into account file names with spaces, quotes, etc.

Using a variation on what Pádraig Brady sent will take care of this:

find data -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 cp -av --backup=numbered 
--target-directory=alldata

2) Eric wrote, "Thanks for the suggestion.  However, it seems like this 
is already possible with existing tools, so why add the bloat?"

Because I'm sure you'd agree having to use find + xargs + cp is not very 
intuitive compared with "cp -pr --flatten data -t alldata"

Thanks for listening to my suggestion anyway!