Proposal: support wildcards and destination names in docker cp

Make docker cp work more like scp

Usage: docker cp CONTAINER:PATH HOSTPATH

Proposed

1 Allow the PATH to contain standard filesystem wildcards, and then expand them on the container side.
2 Allow the HOSTPATH to be the resulting filename if the daemon sends it a single file.

right now

HOSTPATH is a dir, which will even be created for you - rather than the name of the resulting file, and wildcards are not expanded.

tmp $ mkdir sven
tmp $ docker cp sven:/etc/* sven
2014/08/25 14:22:37 Error response from daemon: Could not find the file /etc/* in container sven
tmp $ docker cp sven:/etc/passwd sven/banana
tmp $ ls sven/
banana  passwd
tmp $ more sven/*

*** sven/banana: directory ***

tmp $ cd sven
sven $ docker cp sven:/etc/* .
2014/08/25 14:22:23 Error response from daemon: Could not find the file /etc/* in container sven

This reminds me of #6580

yup, true.

I think the wildcard support for this is now done, and #4272 should cover the other bits, so perhaps we can close this?

closed as dup of #4272

@duglin

@duglin I am unable to find anything about docker cp supporting wildcards, and am unable to get wildcards working with docker 1.5.0. Can you please point towards me to somewhere with more info?

@duglin

@duglin
docker cp 87ff9d25b53d:/var/log/apache2/access.log .
copies access.log to .

docker cp 87ff9d25b53d:/var/log/apache2/*.log .
returns: ATA[0000] Error response from daemon: Could not find the file /var/log/apache2/*.log in container 87ff9d25b53d

(Boot2Docker v1.6.2)

You're correct - I think I was mixing up 'docker cp' with "COPY" from Dockerfiles.
However #12858 should do it.

+1 for this feature

looking forward to be implemented.

Can an entire directory recursively be copied? Otherwise .. the obvious question.. how can anything be bulk copied?

recursive copy is supported;

prepare a container having some files;

mkdir repro-7710 && cd repro-7710
docker run --name mycontainer busybox sh -c 'mkdir -p /foo/bar/baz; touch /foo/file /foo/bar/file /foo/bar/baz/file;'

copy the contents of foo recursively;

mkdir output
docker cp mycontainer:/foo/. ./output
tree output
output
├── bar
│   ├── baz
│   │   └── file
│   └── file
└── file

2 directories, 3 files

copy foo, and its contents recursively;

mkdir output2
docker cp mycontainer:/foo ./output2/
tree output2
output2
└── foo
    ├── bar
    │   ├── baz
    │   │   └── file
    │   └── file
    └── file

3 directories, 3 files

A workaround for these limitations, at least with aufs, is to find the mount point of the container's path and copy files from there:

Find the ID of the aufs mount point for this container: sudo cat /var/lib/docker/image/aufs/layerdb/mounts/(container_id)/mount-id
Navigate to the path (as root). This requires that the container be running so that it's mounted: cd /var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/(mount_id)
Copy to/from this path. Keep an eye on permissions.

Until this is implemented, I use the following workaround by tarring it in the container, and extracting it on the host.

docker exec *container* sh -c "tar -cf - /var/log/queue.*.log" | tar --strip-components=2 -xf - -C output/

I have a immilar usecase for this.
I have output files that I need to copy.

the names in the container are:

./src/IntegrationTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-28_15-06-19-518.xml
./src/IntegrationTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-31_08-08-42-488.xml
./src/UnitTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-28_15-06-21-358.xml
./src/UnitTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-31_08-08-45-114.xml
./src/UnitTests/coverage.opencover.xml
./src/.sonarqube/out/.sonar/report-task.txt

My container is not running so an exec hotfix can not be done.

These commands would find the file in the container when I use an interactive terminal.

find . -wholename "**/TestResults/*.xml"
find . -wholename "**/coverage.opencover.xml"
find . -name "report-task.txt"

Following the pattern:

docker cp [OPTIONS] CONTAINER:SRC_PATH DEST_PATH

I would like to write

docker cp -wholename "**/TestResults/*.xml"  CONTAINER:src .
docker cp -wholename "**/coverage.opencover.xml"  CONTAINER:src .
docker cp -name "report-task.txt"  CONTAINER:src .

With a limitation that SRC_PATH and DEST_PATH can only be folder names.
The subfolder structure would be copied from the detected path.

The expected copy result would be

DEST_PATH/IntegrationTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-28_15-06-19-518.xml
DEST_PATH/IntegrationTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-31_08-08-42-488.xml
DEST_PATH/UnitTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-28_15-06-21-358.xml
DEST_PATH/UnitTests/TestResults/TrxResults_2019-05-31_08-08-45-114.xml
DEST_PATH/UnitTests/coverage.opencover.xml
DEST_PATH/.sonarqube/out/.sonar/report-task.txt

@Aypahyo

@Aypahyo You can circumvent the "not running" part by commiting the container to an image and running the exec workaround on the new image.

+1 for this feature

@Aypahyo

One other alternative to achieve what is being asked from this enhancement is to use a dockerignore and docker cp together. I would think that this is far more powerful than equipping docker cp with wildcard support.

As an example, @Aypahyo's use case can be solved using this inverse dockerignore file to whitelist the files of interest.

File: Dockerfile.copy.dockerignore

# ignore everything
*

# except these artifacts of interest
!**/TestResults/*.xml
!**/coverage.opencover.xml
!**/report-task.txt

Essentially, we can use docker to create a context (via daemon sock bind + docker_cli) from inside the final container to suit our needs and copy it to the host via docker cp. Kind of meta!
File: Dockerfile.copy

ARG RESULT_IMAGE
FROM ${RESULT_IMAGE}
WORKDIR /temporary

# copy with same file names
COPY . .

# copy with a different file name and/or different folder
COPY src/run-2021-02-22-01-10/stats.log results/final.txt

Finally,

docker cp <COPY_IMAGE_CONTAINER>:/temporary/src <path-mapped-to-the-host-target>

This allows to solve any complex "copy the result" scenarios using Docker's ability to tailor a context as needed.
(ex: monorepo build output and test results)
Also not that this addresses both the aspects of the proposal from OP => "wildcards" and "destination names".

I'm no expert with Docker, so I'm looking for any feedback folks might have. Does this approach fall into one of these buckets?

This is a bad idea and we should not use this because _____ (ex: perf, security, etc.).
This does not work for all use cases such as ____.
This is too complex and/or an overkill to solve the problem at hand.

Evidently, after 7.x years, as of 2022, the docker cp command still does not support wildcards. Is it possible to at least give a better error message than ""docker cp" requires exactly 2 arguments" ? That would at least save time vs hunting for status of wildcard support on various forums

Evidently, after 7.x years, as of 2022, the docker cp command still does not support wildcards. Is it possible to at least give a better error message than ""docker cp" requires exactly 2 arguments" ? That would at least save time vs hunting for status of wildcard support on various forums

One more year
And we're still there
Whilst I'm getting older
Getting gray hair

Wow, this is wild !

+1 🙏

I'm also stucked... is there anybody in 2025? ping..

+1 🙏

+1

Until docker cp supports this, I wrote a small CLI that adds wildcards on top of it (it can also be installed as a Docker CLI plugin, docker cpg): https://github.com/Jwrede/docker-cpg

It takes the fixed directory in front of the first wildcard, streams it with docker cp CONTAINER:DIR/. - and extracts only the matching entries on the host. Nothing runs inside the container, so it also works on stopped containers and on images without sh or tar, where the docker exec ... tar workaround from this thread fails.

docker-cpg "web:/var/log/app/*.log" logs/
docker-cpg -e old "web:/var/log/**/*.log" logs/    # recursive, skip old/
docker-cpg src/*.py config/ web:/app                # several sources in one call

Limits: it reads the whole fixed directory and filters on the host, so web:/**/*.conf streams the entire container filesystem. * and ** skip dotfiles, as in the shell. With a wildcard the destination is always a directory. No container-to-container copy. Tested on Linux with Docker 27 and 28.

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Proposal: support wildcards and destination names in `docker cp` #7710

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Proposal: support wildcards and destination names in docker cp #7710

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Proposed

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vieux commented on Aug 27, 2014

SvenDowideit commented on Aug 29, 2014

duglin commented on Sep 30, 2014

jessfraz commented on Sep 30, 2014

ferrouswheel commented on Feb 23, 2015

gpetz commented on May 25, 2015

duglin commented on May 25, 2015

mmarzec commented on Jun 16, 2016

xmhubj commented on Jun 30, 2016

7 remaining items

thaJeztah commented on Feb 21, 2018

courtarro commented on Jul 10, 2018

michaelarnauts commented on Mar 11, 2019

Aypahyo commented on May 31, 2019

deiga commented on May 31, 2019

jpereira commented on Mar 25, 2020

vinaygunnam commented on Feb 22, 2021

signalogic commented on Feb 18, 2022

kevinkopf commented on Feb 12, 2023

proof-of-reality commented on Oct 19, 2023

debilin commented on Jan 17, 2024

iamjjanga-ouo commented on Apr 23, 2024

cektom commented on May 1, 2024

StiliyanKushev commented on Jun 28, 2024

Jwrede commented on Oct 30, 2026

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Proposal: support wildcards and destination names in `docker cp` #7710