Copy/replace an Application via Terminal

I am not at home right now to check the syntax Mac OS X wants to see, but you can do a simple man cp in terminal and you will get the options list. It should be something of the form <cp -R .Downloads/folder name ./Applications> The -R does a recursive copy of the folder and all contents. Check the exact syntax, however, by doing the man search.

Somewhere in the list of options there should be recursive switch, most Unix systems use -R but some may use a -r, the trick is to be using the right one. You can always make sure the -i switch is set so it asks you for permissiont to do copy on each file in the directory...kind of painful if there are a lot of files.

Ok, Berkely 4.3, Mac OS X is a derivative of BSD which is from Berkely 4.3, says the -r (recursive) You can use this option when the destination is a directory. If any of the files in the source-file-list is a directory, the -r option will cause cp to copy the contents of that directory and any of its subdirctories into the destination-directory. The subdirectories themselves are copied as well as the files they contain.

Format: cp [options] source-file-list destination-directory

Hope this helps.

The safest way to enter the copy command with the correct argument would be the following:

(This will automatically generate all necessary escape characters in the pathnames)

when in Terminal type (as suggested by Ralph Landry):

sudo cp -R (followed by a "space char", but no "enter" or "return")

• Now drag the application you want to copy right into the Terminal Window, this should generate the correct pathname to the Application,
• again enter a "space"
• Now drag the Applications Folder right into the Terminal Window, to generate the pathname,
• read the expanded command carefully, if the filenames appear to be correct
• hit the return key.

This will recursively copy your app to the Applications folder. The prefix "sudo" will allow you to do this in Administrator mode, since the Application Folder is protected. You will be asked for your Administrator password.

Interesting, that method wants to see a cap R...does that approach retain all the permissions as they are in the source? That is a problem with the various Unix versions, some retain the permissions, some do not and you have the fun of correcting them.

Hello Ralph,

I was wondering myself. I could find nothing on the man page; but all test samples that I copied in this way were copied with the permissions intact.

Cheers

Léonie

Thanks, that is good to know that there is a method that takes the drudgery out of moving directories. Can't argue with what works.

Ralph

I just tried that:

cp -R /Applications/Caffeine.app /Users/dreschle/Desktop/testing

and the resulting Caffein.app in /Users/dreschle/Desktop/testing/Caffeine.app was running without problems.

What was the terminal command string you entered?

I see, the slashes at the end ensure that only the subfolders are copied.

I did not know that command completion would create the slashes, always something new to learn

Cheers

Léonie