Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Copying Files with cp

Like mv, which is covered later, cp is a command that is easily used and mastered. However, two marvelous parameters rarely see much use (which is a shame) despite their power. These are --parents and –u. The first copies the full path of the file into the new directory; the second copies only if the source file is newer than the destination.

Using --parents requires a little explanation, so here is an example. You have a file, /home/matthew/desktop/documents/work/notes.txt, and want to copy it to your /home/matthew/backup folder. You could do a normal cp, but that would give you /home/matthew/backup/notes.txt, so how would you know where that came from later? If you use --parents, the file is copied to /home/matthew/backup/desktop/ ...