How to copy and edit files in Android shell?

Issue

The Android shell does not have the cp command. Android shell also has no sed or grep or vi. I have no adb daemon available. There is mv command but it rejects to work if source is on a read-only device.

1. What to do if I have to copy some directories from read-only device recursively?
2. How to change a line in a text file (e.g. "PATH=/cache" to be "PATH=/mnt/asec") ?

Solution

The most common answer to that is simple: Bundle few apps (busybox?) with your APK (assuming you want to use it within an application). As far as I know, the /data partition is not mounted noexec, and even if you don't want to deploy a fully-fledged APK, you could modify ConnectBot sources to build an APK with a set of command line tools included.

For command line tools, I recommend using crosstool-ng and building a set of statically-linked tools (linked against uClibc). They might be big, but they'll definitely work.

Answered By - p_l