Copy and overwrite a file in shell script

Question

I want to copy a certain file to a location, irrespective of that file already exists in the destination or not. I'm trying to copy through shell script.But the file is not getting copied. I'm using the following command

/bin/cp -rf /source/file /destination

but that doesn't work.

Answer 1

This question has been already discussed, however you can write a little script like this:

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -d "$2" ]; then
  mkdir -p "$2"
fi
cp -R "$1" "$2"

Answer 2

Your problem might be caused by an alias for cp command created in your system by default (you can see al your aliases by typing "alias"). For example, my system has the following alis by default: alias cp='cp -i', where -i overrides -f option, i.e. cp will always prompt for overwriting confirmation.

What you need in such case (that'll actually work even if you don't have an alias) is to feed "yes" to that confirmation. To do that simply modify your cp command to look like this:

yes | cp /source/file /destination

Answer 3

Use

cp -fr /source/file /destination

this should probably solve the problem.

Answer 4

/bin/cp -rf src dst or /usr/bin/env cp -rf