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When I copy files from one directory to another, the directory permissions get reset (e.g: from 0755 to 0775), and this causes problems, forcing me to go back and manually reset directory permissions. I'm currently doing cp -r /source/directory /destination/directory
I want to copy all of the files and new directories, but not overwrite permissions of existing directories.
Add -p flag
cp -pR /source/dir /dest/dir
From man cp:
-p same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps
To preserve links you may use cp (manpage for cp ) with the -d flag, which is equivalent to --no-dereference --preserve=links.
To combine this with the -p and -R flags you can use the archive flag -a.
My ~/.bashrc has been modified to contain
alias cp='cp -i --preserve=all'
This means when I use cp, it will also prompt before overwriting (-i), and preserve all (i.e. mode, ownership, timestamps; and if possible additional attributes: context, links, xattr).
You could always change it to just mode instead of all if you like, but I do like having this alias to change the defaults of cp.
