How to copy folder structure without files into a new directory on MacOS Catalina?

I've looked this up and tried everything using rsync and involving find ., but keep getting errors. Using rsync I get "rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3)", and using find . all my subfolders I want to copy say "read-only file system." I've seen that this is a common issue with Catalina, however. Is there an alternate solution that will allow me to copy just the folder structure (without the files) into a new directory? Thanks!

2 Answers

Say you cded to the folder you want to copy, and the destination is ~/kiki.

You can just run

find . -type d -exec mkdir -p ~/kiki/{} \;

and you're done.

Try without rsync:

The following will list all directory structure without files:

# find . -type d

to add a prefix for each input line (not really useful as standalone command)

# sed 's/^/mkdir /'

put it together:

# find . -type d | sed 's/^/mkdir /'

creating the script, so you can create the Directory structure later:

# find . -type d | sed 's/^/mkdir /' > DirStructure.sh
# chmod +x DirStructure.sh

then, run the script "./DirStructure.sh" in order to create the directory tree wherever you want, whenever you want.