cp.1 (2012 03)

cp(1) cp(1)

If LC_CTYPE is not speciﬁed in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of

LANG is used

as a default for each unspeciﬁed or empty variable. If

LANG is not speciﬁed or is set to the empty string,

a default of "C" (see lang (5)) is used instead of

LANG. If any internationalization variable contains an

invalid setting,

cp behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See environ (5).

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.