Copy folder recursively, excluding some folders
Use rsync:
rsync -av --exclude='path1/to/exclude' --exclude='path2/to/exclude' source destinationNote that using source and source/ are different. A trailing slash means to copy the contents of the folder source into destination. Without the trailing slash, it means copy the folder source into destination.
Alternatively, if you have lots of directories (or files) to exclude, you can use --exclude-from=FILE, where FILE is the name of a file containing files or directories to exclude.
--exclude may also contain wildcards, such as --exclude=*/.svn*
You can use find with the -prune option.
An example from man find:
cd /source-dir find . -name .snapshot -prune -o \( \! -name *~ -print0 \)| cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir This command copies the contents of /source-dir to /dest-dir, but omits files and directories named .snapshot (and anything in them). It also omits files or directories whose name ends in ~, but not their con‐ tents. The construct -prune -o \( ... -print0 \) is quite common. The idea here is that the expression before -prune matches things which are to be pruned. However, the -prune action itself returns true, so the following -o ensures that the right hand side is evaluated only for those directories which didn't get pruned (the contents of the pruned directories are not even visited, so their contents are irrelevant). The expression on the right hand side of the -o is in parentheses only for clarity. It emphasises that the -print0 action takes place only for things that didn't have -prune applied to them. Because the default `and' condition between tests binds more tightly than -o, this is the default anyway, but the parentheses help to show what is going on.