Question

How can we copy an entire directory under another directory?

(a) using -R option

(b) using -a option

(c) using -u option

(d) none of the mentioned

The question was posed to me by my school teacher while I was bunking the class.

Asked question is from Copying a File: cp Command in section Handling Ordinary Files of Unix

Answer 1

The correct choice is (a) using -R option

Easy explanation: -R option is used to copy an entire directory structure into another one recursively. Here recursively means that the command can descend a directory and examine all the files in its subdirectories and then it will copy the entire structure. For example,  cp  -R prog_one  new_prog. It will create a copy of contents of entire directory prog_one to new_prog if new_prog does not exist. Otherwise, if new_prog exists as a directory,  then the whole structure of prog_one will be copied under new_prog as a subdirectory.