Copy the contents of a directory into another

Question

I would like to copy the contents of a directory into another. I don't want to copy the directory and all files and directories under it, but just the contents of the directory just as if it were a regular file.

Doing cp -r target dest copies the directory and the entire hierarchy rooted in it.

Can anyone please suggest a command to do that? I get error if I do not include the -r option.

(I am calling cp from within a C program.)

Answer 1

I am not sure to have understood what you want exactly, anyway something like

find  MyDir  -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec cp "{}" destdir \;

will copy all files from MyDir to destdir.

Answer 2

Use cp * target from inside the directory.

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Answer 3

cp source/* target

This way it won't copy subdirectories that would need -r