REMI : I'm going to show you how to copy files and directories.
It's pretty easy with the cp command.
Let's try first to create a file with cat.
So cat, and I redirect to f1.
So I am in input mode.
And I put hello, for example, and then enter Control D. And so if I cat f1,
I have hello inside.
Good.
And to copy a file to another one, well, you just use cp, so cp f1 to f2, Enter.
And if I cat f2, indeed I have hello.
Remember that we also used another technique with cat.
So if you cat f2, for example, you will have the output of the content of f2.
And if you redirect that output to f3, then it's the same as copying the file.
So if you cat f3, you also have hello, because cat f2 will put the
output the content of f2, and you redirect the output to the file f3.
So let's try now those with directories.
So let's create directory d1.
All right.
Let's move the file f1 to d1.
And now let's try to copy d1 to d2.
Enter.
And here you have an error:
omitting directory d1.
Why that?
Because as for removing folders, you have to do it recursively.
So you have to add an option cp minus r for recursive, and then it will work.
So d1 into d2, Enter.
And then you have--
you see the file browser.
We have d1 and d2, and we have also the file f1 that
was inside d1 that was copied also.
Now we can try to copy again d1 into d2.
Look at that.
If I do again cp minus r d1 into d2, what will happen here?
Let's try that.
And indeed, because d2 the first time was not created,
it created the d2 directory.
But here, because d2 is existing, it will copy the content of the directory 1
inside d2 that is existing.
And you can see in the file browser that we have d2 containing d1 containing f1.
Let's try that a third time, the same one.
It will be minus r d1 into d2.
So it has overwritten all the files that were already in d1 existing in d2.
So you have to be very careful.
Let's look at the help of cp with --help.
And as you can see, we can prompt before overwrite using -i,
or you can force the overwrite with -f.
So let's try again this cp, but this time, let's add i just after the r.
And here you see you have the question, do you want to override d2 d1 f1 ?
That's because d2 d1 f1 is already existing,
and you are trying to copy d1 inside of d2.
So let's say no.
All right.
And that's how you detect if you are overwriting inside a directory that
is already existing.
So you know how to copy files and directories.
And to make sure that you are not overwriting
directories that are already existing, you just
add the option i, just like here.
So try it by yourself.