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

Suppose you want to copy fileName.txt to all sub-directories within present working directory.

1. Get all sub-directories names through ls and save them to some temporary file say, allFolders.txt

   ls > allFolders.txt
   

2. Print the list and pass it to command xargs.

   cat allFolders.txt | xargs -n 1 cp fileName.txt