On 2017-01-03 12:13, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I wish to duplicate a partition's directory structure without any of the
> existing file contents. The immediate application is a heavily customized
> version of an installation DVD. There are two underlying goals. I wish to
> reuse
> some existing utilities which expect to find data in a particular branch of
> the
> directory tree. The second is very similar in that a person familiar with a
> structure would assume that certain types of information will be in a
> particular
> sub-directory.
>
> Also this will be an educational experience as I expect the answer will be
> elegant in its simplicity and point me towards chasms in my understanding of
> Linux.
>
> Thank you.
In cases where I can't use rsync I use this function in bash:
#Make directories based on the contents of a file (one dir per line)
function mkdir_from_file {
#Verify first argument (source file)
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "[ERROR] No file given!"
return 1
fi
if [ ! -f "$1" ]; then
echo "[ERROR] '$1' is not a file or does not exist!"
return 1
fi
#Read a line from the given file and make a directory using that line as a
#path. Each line is used "as is". No validity checking is done.
while read -r LINE; do
#Skip lines beginning with a hash
[[ "$LINE" = "\#*" ]] && continue
#Strip trailing comments and spaces
LINE="${LINE%%#*}"
LINE="${LINE%% *}"
#Skip if no path remains
[[ "$LINE" == "" ]] && continue
#Make a dir using the line as a path
mkdir -p "$LINE"
done < "$1"
}
You can easily build the input file with find -type d
Sometimes I need to add a new directory structure to systems. In those cases I
just write the wanted dirs to a file and run this script. Maybe you can adjust
it to your needs.
HTH
Grx HdV
