OT (ish): How to copy hidden files/directories

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004, James Wilkinson wrote:

> CB wrote:
>> I can't figure out how to do this: copy (or move) all the hidden files
>> and directories contained in one directory to another directory.
>>
>> Is it as embarrasingly simple as I imagine it must be?
>
> Last time this came up, Ulrich Drepper pointed out the
> shopt -s dotglob
> command.

however, that requires a special shell option that won't work if one 
is not using, say, bash.  a solution that uses only regular wildcards:

$ cp -r * .[!.]* <destdir>

why this works is left as an exercise for the viewer.

rday