UNIX command for copying files and directories
Key facts
- Original author
- AT&T Bell Laboratories
- Developers
- Various open-source and commercial developers
- Initial release
- November 3, 1971 ; 54 years ago ( 1971-11-03 )
- Written in
- Plan 9: C
- Operating system
- Unix , Unix-like , Plan 9 , Inferno , KolibriOS
- Platform
- Cross-platform
- Type
- Command
- License
- coreutils : GPLv3 , Plan 9: MIT License
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Part of
- GNU Core Utilities
- Has use
- copying
Show 2 more facts
- described at URL
- pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cp.html
- has command line option
- X
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
cp is a shell command for copying files and directories.
If the user has write access to a target file, the command copies the content by opening it in update mode. This preserves the file's inode instead of creating a new file with default permissions.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “cp” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.