cp -r without hidden files
Solution 1:
You can use rsync instead of cp:
rsync -av --exclude=".*" src dest
This excludes hidden files and directories. If you only want to exclude hidden directories, add a slash to the pattern:
rsync -av --exclude=".*/" src dest
Solution 2:
You can do
cp -r SRC_DIR/* DEST_DIR
to exclude all .files and .dirs in the SRC_DIR level, but still it would copy any hidden files in the next level of sub-directories.
Solution 3:
rsync has "-C" option
http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html
Example:
rsync -vazC dir1 dir2