Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

cpio

Synopsis

cpio control_options [options]

Copies file archives in from or out to disk or to another location on the local machine. Note that until native drivers for tape drives exist for Mac OS X, cpio can’t write to tape. Each of the three control options, -i, -o, or -p, accepts different options. (See also ditto, pax, and tar.)

cpio doesn’t preserve resource forks or metadata when copying files that contain them. For such files, use ditto instead.

cpio -i [options] [patterns]

Copy in (extract) files whose names match selected patterns. Each pattern can include filename metacharacters from the Bourne shell. (Patterns should be quoted or escaped so they are interpreted by cpio, not by the shell.) If no pattern is used, all files are copied in. During extraction, existing files aren’t overwritten by older versions in the archive (unless -u is specified).

cpio -o [options]

Copy out a list of files whose names are given on the standard input.

cpio -p [options] directory

Copy files to another directory on the same system. Destination pathnames are interpreted relative to the named directory.

Comparison of valid options

Options available to the -i, -o, and -p options are shown respectively in the first, second, and third row below. (The - is omitted for clarity.)

                     i:     b B c C d E f H I    m   r s S t u v 6
o: a A   B c C       H    L   O           v
p: a           d        l L m           u v

Options

-a

Reset access times of input files.

-A

Append files to an archive (must use with -O).

-b

Swap bytes and half-words. Words are 4 bytes.