Using cp command in linux shell, how do I copy a whole directory into another directory?

Posted by Dmitry Supranovich on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dmitry Supranovich
Published on 2012-09-30T20:53:55Z Indexed on 2012/10/01 3:38 UTC
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linux

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shell

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cp

I have a directory, let's say, "work": ~/work/ This directory has some sub-folders (d1, d2...) in it and files in these sub-folders. I want to make a backup copy in the same folder, so it would be like: ~/backup/work/ However, when I use cp -r ./work ./backup the folder "work" is not copied, only its subfoders (so now it's ~/backup/d1 ~/backup/d2...) Any idea how to make it work? I'm quite new to shell, so I'm missing something :)

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