Can someone help me understand what that means?

cp: -r not specified; omitting directory

I am trying to use this command

sudo cp /home/$USER/Documents/myfile.10 /home

Error:

cp: -r not specified; omitting directory '/home/administrator/Documents/myfile.10'

What does it mean? Why did it happen? What can I do about it?

2

1 Answer

cp: -r not specified; omitting directory '/home/administrator/Documents/myfile.10'

This means myfile.10 is a directory. cp won't copy it, unless you explicitly use -r (or equivalent) flag.

For cp in my Debian these are equivalent: -r, -R, --recursive. POSIX, however defines -R only (-r is mentioned as obsolescent). It says:

If source_file is of type directory, the following steps shall be taken:

• If the -R option was not specified, cp shall write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with source_file, and go on to any remaining files.

[...]

The conclusion is your cp does exactly what it's supposed to do. If you want to copy the whole directory, use -R. If you expected myfile.10 to be a non-directory then you need to investigate why the discrepancy.

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