On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 17:40 -0400, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I had at one point copied a large number of files between drives and did not use the -p and thus the timestamps were all set to the date of the copy.
I did not catch this, and deleted the source. So I 'lived' with it and have since changed many files.
Well, yesterday I found a good backup of many of those files and I want to restore them to their proper dates.
cp -p -u is exactly the opposite of what I want. I want to copy only if the source files have an earlier date than the destination files.
I suggest "man find" and focus on the (new to me) versions of "newer". I think, IIUC, that one of those tests will meet your needs. When the test passes, an appropriate "exec ..." may do what you want.
The source files are just an old copy on another drive that I found when cleaning up things...
<snip>
HTH -- Bill