command line - Copy a list of files preserving directory structure, without scripts

Is there a way to copy a list of files, that share a common base directory, preserving their relative directory structure? The files with relative paths are listed in a text file. edit I have the filenames listed in a plain text file.

I'd like to do this without using a script (no bash/batch/python/ruby/lua/etc.), similar to how wget -i works for urls. (My reason is that it'd give overhead/non-standard solution for a reasonably common task.)

I've tried cat list.txt | xargs -I % cp % new_folder from Copy list of files but it didn't preserve the relative directory path.

I'd do this to export my selection of files (that I already have in a text file) from a directory structure that has big number of files (happens from time to time).

Answer

tar cvf - ./filesAndDirecotries | (cd targetDirectory ; tar xvf - )

TAR (Tape Archive is old command to create an archive file) can write to stdin ( " - " parameter for the file ) and pipe and read from stdin in the second directory.

Above command first creates a tar file and writes to stdin and piped to a shell and change directory and untar the file by reading it from stdin.