How does cp -a work

Question

I am trying to understand linux and working through some tutorials. One states that I can copy files to the current directory by using a cp -a command with a relative pathname such as

cp -a ../somedir/.   

It fails each time I run it. Is the syntax incorrect?
I tried the man page, but it didn't seem to find anything that answers my question.

Solution 1

cp -a ../somedir/. is wrong. The general syntax is

cp source target

You only specified one argument. To copy something to current directory, you can run

cp ../somedir .

Note the space before the dot. . is shorthand for current directory. .. is shorthand for parent directory.

Solution 2

You can say:

cp -a ../somedir . if you want to copy the folder it self with its content

Or you can say

cp -a ../somedir/* . If you want to copy the content of the folder.

the -a option will try to clone the same file structure with the same file tree to the new location

Comments

[Henrique]

you are missing a blank space between somedir and the last dot. See vidarlo 's answer, it is correct. Upvote it! Accept it!

[rm-vanda]

Also something I wish I had known a whole lot earlier when learning Linux & bash is that you can press tab to get autocomplete; press it twice for suggestions.

[mckenzm]

-a "preserves" everything and recurses. There is a man page for this.