How to copy a file to multiple directories using the gnu cp command

Question

Is it possible to copy a single file to multiple directories using the cp command ?

I tried the following , which did not work:

cp file1 /foo/ /bar         


        

Answer 1

As far as I can see it you can use the following:

ls | xargs -n 1 cp -i file.dat

The -i option of cp command means that you will be asked whether to overwrite a file in the current directory with the file.dat. Though it is not a completely automatic solution it worked out for me.