11.1 ‘cp’: Copy files and directories
=====================================

‘cp’ copies files (or, optionally, directories).  The copy is completely
independent of the original.  You can either copy one file to another,
or copy arbitrarily many files to a destination directory.  Synopses:

     cp [OPTION]… [-T] SOURCE DEST
     cp [OPTION]… SOURCE… DIRECTORY
     cp [OPTION]… -t DIRECTORY SOURCE…

   • If two file names are given, ‘cp’ copies the first file to the
     second.

   • If the ‘--target-directory’ (‘-t’) option is given, or failing that
     if the last file is a directory and the ‘--no-target-directory’
     (‘-T’) option is not given, ‘cp’ copies each SOURCE file to the
     specified directory, using the SOURCEs’ names.

   Generally, files are written just as they are read.  For exceptions,
see the ‘--sparse’ option below.

   By default, ‘cp’ does not copy directories.  However, the ‘-R’, ‘-a’,
and ‘-r’ options cause ‘cp’ to copy recursively by descending into
source directories and copying files to corresponding destination
directories.