UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all.
I'm not getting the hang of Paths. I have a dir w/files that I want to copy to another dir. Right now I am in the "source" directory. I want to copy it to Ch7.

"cp -r source Ch7". Ch7 was already created.
1st msg.: cannot stat `source`: No such file or dir.
I typed pwd & got "/home/Ccccc/Ch6/source

then I typed /home/Ccccc/Ch6/source/ Ch7
2nd msg.: no such dir.

Any ideas?
Thanks In Advance

You should probably use -R instead of -r. See this.

In any case you are trying to copy a directory called souece in the current directory (source). If the current directory is source, then that is referenced with . (dot).

i.e.

Code:

$ cp -R . Ch7

Otherwise:

Code:

$ pwd
/home/Ccccc/Ch6/source

$ cd ..
$ pwd
/home/Ccccc/Ch6
$ cp -R source Ch7

(giving the path to Ch7, based on where you currently are)

For instance

Code:

/home/Ccccc/Ch6/source/ Ch7

will access
/ main root directory, then the / to
home directory, then the / to
Ccccc directory, then the / to
Ch6 directory, then the / to
source directory, then the / to
Ch7 file
NOTE that extra space. Unusual, but not ungeard of, for a space to be embedded as the first character in a file.

The message you report did not come from the command you say you typed.


What did you actually type?
What was the response?


What is the output from this command (to display your directory tree):

Code:

find /home/Ccccc/ -type d -exec ls -lad {} \;