How do I copy a directory from one to another BUT preserving directory structure and only use soft symlink for the files?

Question

With reference to this...

/var/web/site/123/(everything inside) to /var/web/site/234/(everything from 123 BUT files are soft symlinked only)

how can this be done using 1 line? i dont want to save to another file etc and the directory input needs to be full directory /var/web/site/123 and not relative directory ./

Copy folder structure (without files) from one location to another. I want to keep the folder structure BUT only symlink the files.

Any takers on this? Using linux command line.

Rational for doing so:

The origin directory "123" is the default pristine work directory to clone new user's directory "234" to work from. So any new users, when they create their working directory, they can get from the original directory to carry on new work on their own directory.

There are subfolders with files need to take into consideration

Answer 1

You can replicate folder structures like so

rsync -a -f'+ */' -f'- *' $SOURCE_DIR $DEST_DIR

And wildcards should let you symlink the files (see this answer)... I think you'll need to be careful to filter out subfolders though...

ln -s /tmp/one/* /tmp/two/