cp
Copy
The shell command cp
is used to copy files or directories.
The basic argument structure is cp source destination
, where the source
is the file/directory to copy to the destination
file/directory.
$ cp file1 file1_copy
$ cp file1 file2 destination_folder
Command Options
Options can be used to modify the behavior of shell commands. Shell command options are commonly represented by a single letter preceded by a -
. For example, -l
, -a
, and -d
could all be options that follow a shell command.
mv
Move
The shell command mv
is used to move a file into a directory. Use mv
with the source file as the first argument and the destination directory as the second argument.
$ mv index.html website/
rm
Remove
The shell command rm
is used to delete files and directories. The -r
flag deletes a directory and all of its files and directories (rm -r
).
$ rm -r bad_selfies
ls
List Command Options
The shell command ls
is used to list the contents in a directory. It can be combined with the following command options:
-a
: lists all contents, including hidden files and directories.-l
: lists all contents, in long format.-t
: lists all contents, by the time they were last modified.
$ ls -a
$ ls -l
$ ls -t