OS X cp command in Terminal - No such file or directory

Question

this might be one of those days my brain just does not work  or i m incredibly dumb  i ve been trying to copy files  which are actually directories  app   bundle  etc   but consistently get an error  No such file or directory   i ve tried every possible combination of using no   slash  using the file name  using no file name  help      original directory    desktop directory file bundle  destination directory   library application  support directory  so in otherwords  the file bundle needs to go in that   directory  tried     cp  HOME Desktop directory file bundle  library application  support directory cp   Users airhead Desktop directory file bundle  No such file or directory    cp -rf   desktop directory file bundle  library application  support directory   cp   Users airhead Desktop  directory file bundle  No such file or directory    cd       cp -r directory file bundle  library application  support directory file bundle cp   Users airhead Desktop directory file bundle  No such file or directory    cp -Rf  HOME  directory file bundle    library application  support directory   cp  directory  Library Application  Support directory  does not exist   additional info     ls -la  HOME Desktop directory  ls   Users airhead Desktop directory   No such file or directory

User · Answer

I know this question has already been answered, but another option is simply to open the destination and source folders in Finder and then drag and drop them into the terminal. The paths will automatically be copied and properly formatted (thus negating the need to actually figure out proper file names/extensions).

I have to do over-network copies between Mac and Windows machines, sometimes fairly deep down in filetrees, and have found this the most effective way to do so.

So, as an example:

cp -r [drag and drop source folder from finder] [drag and drop destination folder from finder]

User · Answer

On OS X Sierra 10 12  None of the above work  cd then drag and drop does not work  No spacing or other fixes work  I cannot cd into   Library Support using any technique that I can find  Is this a security feature  I m going to try disabling SIP and see if it makes a difference

User · Answer

In my case  I had accidentally named a folder  samples    I couldn t see the space when I did  ls -la   Eventually I realized this when I tried tabbing to autocomplete and saw  samples      To fix this I ran mv samples   samples

User · Answer

Summary of solution  directory is neither an existing file nor directory  As it turns out  the real name is directory 1 as revealed by ls -la  HOME Desktop   The complete working command is cp -R  HOME directory 1 file bundle  library application  support directory   with the -R parameter for recursive copy  compulsory for copying directories

[macos] OS X cp command in Terminal - No such file or directory

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