cp says "same file" for two different directories

Question

I have directory A with subdirectory B and am trying to copy everything from B to A. Within A, I run

cp -ar B/ ~/A, 

and get the message that

"cp: âB/â and â/u/username/A/Bâ are the same file"

However, I'm not sure why it thinks the destination would involve B.

Solution 1

In general, this attempts to copy B, not its contents, into A. Since B is already a subdirectory of A, cp is rightly saying that the source and destination are the same file.

If you instead want to copy the contents of B into A, you want:

cp -ar /path/to/A/B/* /path/to/A/

If A is your current working directory, then this works instead:

cp -ar B/* .

Solution 2

The command cp -ar B/ ~/A won't only copy the contents of B but the whole B itself which is already present in A. So, try running cp -ar B/* . within the directory A.

Comments

[Julie Pelletier]

Where are these â coming from?

[Thushi]

His current directory is already A. So, cp -ar B/* . will do.