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December 30, 2006
Copy multiple files - confusing error message from cp
Thought you might like me to share this one ...
Copying a whole series of files into a directory (Linux, Unix, OS X) using cp, you give a whole series of source files followed by the name of the target directory. Add the -r option is you want to specify subdirectories to be copied recursively in your input.
So this should work, eh?
grahamellis$ cp -r whc.css images grgen.php ~/back_20061229/htaccess
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 ... srcN directory
grahamellis$
What an odd result. Is the -r option wrong? No - that's not the problem. In my opinion, there's a bug in cp in that the usage line is incomplete, but that's not the real problem. The real problem was that I specified an existing file name as the target for my copy, and cp won't copy a whole series of files into one.
If I correct my command (by specifying a target directory name), it works perfectly:
grahamellis$ cp -r whc.css images grgen.php ~/back_20061229
grahamellis$
Footnote - if you want to preserve file ownerships as you copy them, use tar instead of cp. You need administrator access (i.e. be logged in as root) to do this.
Posted by gje at December 30, 2006 09:59 AM