xargs and cp: find-style “{}+” multiple expansion?

Question

I'd like to copy a group of files to destination folder. But without needing to spawn a new instance of cp for each operation.

The arg format for cp seems to be:

cp src_file1 src_file2 src_file3 dest_dir/

Assuming I have a file with source file names listed line-by-line, how can this be done?

Since I have a very large number of files, the idea from @Scott below will not work, since it will hit the maximum command line length.

I'd like to somehow pipe that file of file names to cp and let it do it's thing. xargs also can't seem to help, as it wants to tack on the expansion at the end of the command line.

Can this be done?

Thank you

Answer 1

If filelist contains

apple
orange
banana

where those are the names of files that you want to copy to the fruity directory, type

cp `cat filelist` fruity

You don’t need the / at the end.

Warning: this won’t work if any of the file names contain spaces, e.g., passion fruit.

Answer 2

Simulate print0 of find :

cat filelist |perl -p -e 's/\n/\000/' |xargs -0 cp --target-directory dest_dir/

this sample includes xargs -0,--target-directory