How to copy all of the files from one directory to another in a bash script?

Question

To copy all files from a subdirectory into another directory without have to copy the original folder I do this:

cp -r dir1/* dir2

So dir2 has all the files of dir1 but it doesn’t contain the dir1. I want to replicate it in bash script. But I get an error when I run the below code: 

cp -r $pck_dir"/*" $TAR_DIR"/pck/"

This is the error I got:

cp: cannot stat ‘./mailman/lists/mailman/*’: No such file or directory

Can anyone tell me how to copy all the files from a directory to another using bash script? 

Answer 1

1. * will prevent the shell from expanding the wildcard. If you want a slash followed by literal star, you should write like this:  "/*" 

2. Word splitting occurs with unquoted variables. For example, when pck_dir has dir, then $pck_dir"/*" split into two words as my and dir/*. If you want to avoid splitting , shell variables should only be in double quotes. 

See the below code implementation: 

cp -r "$pck_dir"/* "$TAR_DIR/pck/"

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