How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command

Question

Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command ?

I tried the following , which did not work:

cp file1 /foo/ /bar         


        

Answer 1

This will copy to the immediate sub-directories, if you want to go deeper, adjust the -maxdepth parameter.

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d| xargs -n 1 cp -i index.html

If you don't want to copy to all directories, hopefully you can filter the directories you are not interested in. Example copying to all folders starting with a

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d| grep \/a |xargs -n 1 cp -i index.html

If copying to a arbitrary/disjoint set of directories you'll need Robert Gamble's suggestion.