Take the 2-minute tour ×

I want to copy a bunch of folders recursively. However, I don't want one error preventing the copy from finishing. Is there any way to do a recursive copy(cp -R), ignoring (but logging) all errors produced? I'm on Mac OS X, but I assume the answer would be the same for *nixes.

share|improve this question
add comment

2 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Hey, you might want to check out rsync ( http://www.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html ). It can do a more reliable job and only copy the files that didn't copy the first time:

rsync -vza --progress /source/ /destination/

Good luck!

share|improve this answer
This is awesome. Thank you! –  benjy Apr 15 '13 at 17:54
Absolutely exactly what I needed, with a springling of --exclude="<globpattern>" and --delete to keep a try perfectly synched from one project to the next. –  Martijn Pieters Feb 6 at 16:17
add comment

Found the answer: ditto(1)

share|improve this answer
Please share it here so that future people can learn.. –  James Polley Jan 5 '10 at 10:21
I did share the answer... it is ditto. Syntax: ditto <src dirs> <dst dir> –  Mike Jan 5 '10 at 10:25
Odd; when I first viewed this it was a broken image. –  James Polley Jan 5 '10 at 10:47
add comment

Your Answer


