Terminal - copy a few template folders to a long list of folders

Question

doing a family tree project
want to copy the same basic folders (birth, death, marriages, children, etc) to each family member folder. Want to use Terminal - or Applescript, or whatever....
the ditto command seems to lack any recursive destination function, although it can recursively source just fine.
the cp command, born long ago of another Unix world, and still somewhat available on the Mac,  doesnt handle a list of folders inside another folder (recursively copying each to each destination folder)....
The recursive folders part is holding me up. I can do this manually using the option drag copy but who wants to do things the hard way ?

Answer 1

Use the following AppleScript:
tell application "Finder"
set source_folders to {folder "test1" of desktop}
set dest_folders to {folder "test2" of desktop, folder "test3" of desktop}
repeat with this_folder in dest_folders
duplicate source_folders to this_folder
end repeat
end tell
(58964)