Moving a directory hierarchy - best practice?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2005-03-04 21:35, Joachim Dagerot <jd at dagerot.com> wrote:
>
> I have spent 20 minutes or so googling around to find the best way to
> _move_ a complete directory hierarchy. But must admitt that I haven't
> foundmany good answers.
>
> The best suggestion was from
> http://badgertronics.com/knowledge/one.adp?parent=25:
>
> To move /tmp/blarg to /var:
> % cd /tmp
> % tar cvf - blarg | (cd /var; tar xf -)
>
> I bet there must be atleast one utils like a binary named "mvdir" or
> similar that simply taked two directory names as argument. But I can't
> find any.
>
> How do you guys move around your directory structures from prompt?

I have used the following many times, with very good results:

	# cd /source/path
	# find . | cpio -p -dmvu /destination/dir

The "pass through" mode of cpio(1) works on at least the following
systems that I have used it:

	- Linux
	- BSD
	- Solaris

The first two use GNU cpio(1).  The second uses the system cpio(1),
at least in the versions I have used.