Linux/Unix: How to copy a directory and save the date/time file information
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: April 29 2019
If you need to copy a directory on Unix/Linux and want to preserve the date/time information while copying the directory and files, use the -p option to save the date/time information, and the -r option to copy the directory properly. For instance, I just used this cp command to copy a directory named OldDir to a new directory named NewDir, while retaining all of the date/time file information:
