cp.1 (2010 09)

cp(1) cp(1)

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

EXAMPLES

The following command moves the directory sourcedir and its contents to a new location (targetdir ) in the

ﬁle system. Since

cp creates the new directory, the destination directory targetdir should not already

exist.

cp -r sourcedir targetdir && rm -rf

sourcedir

The

-r option copies the subtree (ﬁles and subdirectories) in directory sourcedir to directory targetdir .

The double ampersand (

&&) causes a conditional action. If the operation on the left side of the

&& is suc-

cessful, the right side is executed (and removes the old directory). If the operation on the left of the

&& is

not successful, the old directory is not removed.

This example is equivalent to:

mv sourcedir targetdir

To copy all ﬁles and directory subtrees in the current directory to an existing targetdir , use:

cp -r * targetdir

To copy all ﬁles and directory subtrees in sourcedir to targetdir , use:

cp -r sourcedir /* targetdir

Note that directory pathnames can precede both sourcedir and targetdir .

To create a zero-length ﬁle, use any of the following:

cat /dev/null >ﬁle

cp /dev/null ﬁle

touch ﬁle

DEPENDENCIES

NFS

Access control lists of networked ﬁles are summarized (as returned in

st_mode by stat()), but not

copied to the new ﬁle. When using mv or ln on such ﬁles, a +

is not printed after the mode value when

asking for permission to overwrite a ﬁle.

AUTHOR

cp was developed by AT&T, the University of California, Berkeley, and HP.