I am trying to understand linux and working through some tutorials. One states that I can copy files to the current directory by using a cp -a command with a relative pathname such as

cp -a ../somedir/. 

It fails each time I run it. Is the syntax incorrect?
I tried the man page, but it didn't seem to find anything that answers my question.

2

2 Answers

cp -a ../somedir/. is wrong. The general syntax is

cp source target

You only specified one argument. To copy something to current directory, you can run

cp ../somedir .

Note the space before the dot. . is shorthand for current directory. .. is shorthand for parent directory.

1

You can say:

cp -a ../somedir .if you want to copy the folder it self with its content

Or you can say

cp -a ../somedir/* . If you want to copy the content of the folder.

the -a option will try to clone the same file structure with the same file tree to the new location

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