Git: copy all files in a directory from another branch

Question

How do I copy all files in a directory from another branch? I can list all of the files in that directory by doing

git ls-tree master:dirname

Answer 1

As you are not trying to move the files around in the tree, you should be able to just checkout the directory:

git checkout master -- dirname

Answer 2

If there are no spaces in paths, and you are interested, like I was, in files of specific extension only, you can use

git checkout otherBranch -- $(git ls-tree --name-only -r otherBranch | egrep '*.java')