bash command to copy directories from list containing directories - getting error

Question

I have a list of directories within a file and I am attempting to copy those directories to a specified destination.

test.lst:

dir1
dir2
dir three

The list is within the same relative path as the directories as well as the destination, as such:

/dirs/dir1
/dirs/dir2
/dirs/dir three
/dirs/test.lst

Command executed in ./dirs:

cat test.lst | xargs -I {} cp -R {} ./_DEST

Expected result:

Directories in list copied from /dirs to /dirs/_DEST

Actual Result:

[.../dirs] # cat test.lst | xargs -I {} cp -R {} ./_DEST
cp: cannot stat `dir1\r': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `dir2\r': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `dir three\r': No such file or directory

I have tried adding the full path into the list for each directory (i.e '/...dirs/dir1'), but no help.
all dirs have been relaxed to 777 and are owned by same user/group that is executing the command.

Answer 1

Your immediate issue is that your test.lst file appears to have DOS-style CRLF line endings (CR is denoted by the \r escape char).

You could convert the file with dos2unix, however instead of using cat and xargs -I {} I'd suggest removing the CR with sed then setting the xargs delimiter to newline ex.

sed 's/\r$//' test.lst | xargs -d '\n' cp -Rt ./_DEST --