to be overwritten. This occurs if the TargetDirectory or TargetFile parameter contains a file with the same name as a file specified in the SourceFile or SourceDirectory parameter. If one enters y (or the locale's equivalent of y), the cp command continues. Any other answer prevents the cp command from overwriting the file. -n (no clobbering) – prevents accidentally overwriting any files -p (preserve) – the -p flag preserves the following characteristics of each source path in the corresponding target: the time of the last data modification and the time of the last access, the ownership (only if it has permissions to do this), and the file permission-bits. -R or -r (recursive) – copy directories recursively Examples Creating a copy of a file in the current directory: cp prog.c prog.bak This copies prog.c to prog.bak. If the prog.bak file does not already exist, the cp command creates it. If it does exist, the cp command replaces its contents with the contents of the prog.c file. Copy two files in the current directory into another directory: cp jones smith /home/nick/clients This copies the files jones to /home/nick/clients/jones and smith to /home/nick/clients/smith. Copy a file to a new file and preserve the modification date, time, and access control list associated with the source file: cp -p smith smith.jr This copies the smith file to the smith.jr file. Instead of creating the file with the current date and time stamp, the system gives the smith.jr file the same date and time as the smith file. The smith.jr file also inherits the smith file's access control protection. Copy a directory, including all its files and subdirectories, to another directory: cp -R /home/nick/clients /home/nick/customers This copies the directory clients, including all its files, subdirectories, and the files in those subdirectories, to the directory customers/clients. Some Unix systems behave differently in this mode, depending on the termination of directory paths. Using cp -R /home/nick/clients/ /home/nick/customers on a GNU system it behaves as expected; however, on a BSD system, it copies all the contents of the "clients" directory, instead of the directory clients'' itself. The same happens in both GNU and BSD systems if the path of the source directory ends in . or .. (with or without trailing slash). The copying of a file to an existing file is performed by opening the existing file in update mode, thereby preserving the files inode, which requires write