I want to copy a certain file to a location, irrespective of that file already exists in the destination or not. I'm trying to copy through shell script.But the file is not getting copied. I'm using the following command
/bin/cp -rf /source/file /destination
but that doesn't work.
Use
cp -fr /source/file /destination
this should probably solve the problem.
This question has been already discussed, however you can write a little script like this:
#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -d "$2" ]; then
mkdir -p "$2"
fi
cp -R "$1" "$2"
#!/bin/bash: tells your computer to use the bash interpreter.
if [ ! -d "$2" ]; then: If the second variable you supplied does not already exist...
mkdir -p "$2": make that directory, including any parent directories supplied in the path.
Running mkdir -p one/two/three will make:
$ mkdir -p one/two/three
$ tree one
one/
└── two
└── three
If you don't supply the -p tag then you'll get an error if directories one and two don't exist:
$ mkdir one/two/three
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘one/two/three’: No such file or directory
fi: Closes the if statement.
cp -R "$1" "$2": copies files from the first variable you supplied to the directory of the second variable you supplied.
So if you ran script.sh mars pluto, mars would be the first variable ($1) and pluto would be the second variable ($2).
The -R flag means it does this recursively, so the cp command will go through all the files and folders from your first variable, and copy them to the directory of your second variable.
Your problem might be caused by an alias for cp command created in your system by default (you can see al your aliases by typing "alias"). For example, my system has the following alis by default: alias cp='cp -i', where -i overrides -f option, i.e. cp will always prompt for overwriting confirmation.
What you need in such case (that'll actually work even if you don't have an alias) is to feed "yes" to that confirmation. To do that simply modify your cp command to look like this:
yes | cp /source/file /destination
/bin/cp -rf src dst or /usr/bin/env cp -rf
> which cp alias cp='cp -i' /bin/cp > cp abc.txt efg.txt cp: overwrite efg.txt'? n > cp -f abc.txt efg.txt cp: overwrite efg.txt'? njust 1 prefix backslash
\cp <source_file> <destiation addr>
cpoverrides the destination unless option-nis given, so your command should succeed. Also you didn't tell us why you think your command fails.