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Viewing and Changing the File System

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
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