Im not sure if this is everything you want, but I used to use cpio.
find . | cpio -pmud <dest>
this will copy hidden files and preserve
various parameters of the source files like last-mod, etc..
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Eirikur Hallgrimsson [mailto:eh@mad.scientist.com]
>Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 21:16
>To: Joseph S Barrera III
>Cc: FoRK
>Subject: Re: Nightmare on Elm Street with Win2k Professional
>
>
>[ Extreme shell geekery. Not of any other interest. ]
>
>I use cp -rauvx as my fallback, but this won't copy hidden
>files and I've
>not figured out a way to get cp to do that.
>
>I prefer to use cpbk, "backup copy" which can be found on Freshmeat.
>
>A really cute hack that I learned from a colleague on this
>Tru-64 adventure
>is to run two copies of tar piped. This preserves all the
>file attributes,
>dates, etc, and offers all the features of tar. I turned it
>into a utility
>shell script thusly:
>
>#!/bin/bash
># tar $1, pipe to tar and unpack in destination $2
>tar -c $1 | tar -C $2 -xvf -
>
>If you put that into a file, and make a command alias for it,
>you get a
>command that takes two directories as arguments and copies the
>first one (and
>its entire tree) into the second one.
>
>tarcopy /sourcedir /destdir
>
>That results in a /destdir/sourcedir that is a the best
>facsimile of the
>original that I know how to get.
>
>Eirikur
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:15:13 PDT