How to Preserve Directory Path with CP Command

The cp command is used to copy files from one directory to another directory. Some times you are required to copy a file with its parent directory structure.

You can use -r option to copy files recursively. But if we need to copy a single file with the full directory structure. Use cp command with --parents option to use full source file name under the directory and create a similar directory structure on the destination.

cp --parents ./dir1/dir2/myfile.txt /opt/

Now list the file on the destination directory. You can see that the same directory structure is created in the destination directory.

ls -l /opt/dir1/dir2/myfile.txt

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4864094 Jan 15 11:09 /opt/dir1/dir2/myfile.txt