The cp command works very much like mv, except it copies
a file instead of moving it. We can check that it did the right
thing using ls with two paths as arguments — like most Unix
commands, ls can be given multiple paths at once:
$ cp quotes.txt thesis/quotations.txt
$ ls quotes.txt thesis/quotations.txt
quotes.txt thesis/quotations.txt
We can also copy a directory and all its contents by using the
recursive option -r,
e.g. to back up a directory:
$ cp -r thesis thesis_backup
We can check the result by listing the contents of both the thesis and thesis_backup directory:
$ ls thesis thesis_backup
thesis:
quotations.txt
thesis_backup:
quotations.txt