UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I tried to copy all the files from an account directory to my account's directory

I did this command:

cp ~account1/direct/* ~myaccount/

the problem is that I did it twice, the first time there was a copy of some files, the seconde time there was a copy other files ? Which means the files were not the same...

Any ideas about the prob ?

The result of both copies should be the same umless something changed in the directory you are copying from.

Furthermore, in general it is not very wise to copy something from another directory directly into your home directory. You could overwrite valid files present in your home directory.

It is smarter to create an empty directory in your homedirectory and copy everything into that directory.

mkdir ~myaccount/colleaguedir
cp ~account1/direct/* ~myaccount/colleguedir

Also, you might not have sufficient rights to copy all files in the other directory.

Last but not least, subdirectories are not copied in this way. If you want those to be copied as well use:
cp -r ~account1/direct/* ~myaccount/colleguedir

Or even better:
cp -r ~account1/direct ~myaccount/colleguedir
This will include files starting with a . (DOT) present in ~account1/direct as well.

I appreciate your help, thank you sir