8.3.4 pax

The new, POSIX (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992, pages 380–388 (section 4.48) and pages 936–940 (section E.4.48)), all-singing, all-dancing, Portable Archive Interchange utility. pax will read, write, and list the members of an archive file, and will copy directory hierarchies. pax operation is independent of the specific archive format, and supports a wide variety of different archive formats.

pax implementations are still new and wet behind the ears.

     # apt-get install pax
     $ pax -rw -p e . newdir
      or
     $ find . -depth  | pax -rw -p e  newdir