What does the command cp $1/. $2 do? I know cp is used for copying from source(stored in variable $1) to destination(stored in variable $2). I am just confused with the /. used along with the variable. Can someone please help me understand this?
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
The command:
$ cp -R $1/. $2
copies contents of directory pointed by $1 to the directory $2.
Without -R switch this command would fail both when $1 is a file or directory.
In general, . points to the current directory. You can see that by comparing inode's shown by ls:
$ mkdir test
$ ls -ali
9525121 drwxr-xr-x 3 IU wheel 102 23 mar 12:31 .
771046 drwxrwxrwt 21 root wheel 714 23 mar 12:30 ..
9525312 drwxr-xr-x 2 IU wheel 68 23 mar 12:31 test
$ cd test
$ ls -ali
9525312 drwxr-xr-x 2 IU wheel 68 23 mar 12:31 .
9525121 drwxr-xr-x 3 IU wheel 102 23 mar 12:31 ..
Note that inode 9525312 points to test when viewed from the parent directory, and points to . when viewed from inside the test directory.