Two more commands dealing with files should finish up giving you a fundamental set of file and directory tools.
You want to copy a file from one place to another, maybe as a backup.
Copying a file is very straight-forward when you know 3 things:
• name of the file (complete with extension)If you know all 3 here is an example of the usage:
cp source/filename target/newfilenameTo make this simple, cd to a directory containing some files, such as your Desktop.
If you are NOT in the 'Desktop' directory, go there now: 'cd ~/Desktop'.
The file we created there (FileOne) should still be there as well as some directories.
In Terminal enter
cp FileOne "The Second"
We did not need to enter the source directory name because we are already in that location.
The same applies to the target directory name, but remember we need to wrap that target directory name in double-quotes because it contains a space character.
To ensure you've done this right, check to see if the file is there ...
2024-11-22 13:02:53 [~/Desktop] trudge: ls -al "The Second" total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 trudge staff 96 Nov 22 13:02 . drwx------@ 10 trudge staff 320 Nov 22 12:21 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 trudge staff 0 Nov 22 13:02 FileOne
YES! You can see it's there, and has 0 bytes. Good job eh!
move
This command acually performs as 2 functions:
• it moves file/s to another location
• it renames file/s
What's the difference between copy and move?
So to move a file to another location, it's similar to cp:
2024-11-23 11:26:13 [~/Desktop] trudge: mv FileOne Third
Verify...
[~/Desktop] trudge: ls -al Third total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 trudge staff 96 Nov 23 11:26 . drwx------@ 9 trudge staff 288 Nov 23 11:26 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 trudge staff 0 Nov 22 12:21 FileOne
Renaming is also similar:
mv Third/FileOne Third/FileOneRenamed
Verify...
[~/Desktop] trudge: ls -al Third total 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 trudge staff 96 Nov 23 11:30 . drwx------@ 9 trudge staff 288 Nov 23 11:26 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 trudge staff 0 Nov 22 12:21 FileOneRenamedwildcards