How to force cp to overwrite without confirmation

Question

I m trying to use the cp command and force an overwrite   I have tried cp -rf  foo    bar  but I am still prompted to confirm each overwrite

User · Answer

I found this   cp  -rf    data danalonso testing target    Source  https   superuser com questions 358843 how-to-replace-all-the-contents-from-one-folder-with-another-one 358851

User · Answer

As some of the other answers have stated  you probably use an alias somewhere which maps cp to cp -i or something similar  You can run a command without any aliases by preceding it with a backslash  In your case  try   cp -r  zzz zzz    xxx xxx   The backslash will temporarily disable any aliases you have called cp

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By default cp has aliase to cp -i  You can check it  type alias and you can see some like   alias cp  cp -i  alias l   ls -d    --color auto  alias ll  ls -l --color auto  alias ls  ls --color auto  alias mv  mv -i  alias rm  rm -i    To solve this problem just use  bin cp  from  to command instead cp  from  to

User · Answer

You probably have an alias somewhere  mapping cp to cp -i  because with the default settings  cp won t ask to overwrite  Check your  bashrc  your  profile etc   See cp manpage  Only when -i parameter is specified will cp actually prompt before overwriting   You can check this via the alias command     alias alias cp  cp -i  alias diff  diff -u         To undefine the alias  use     unalias cp

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I simply used unalias to remove the  cp -i  alias  then do the copy  then set back the alias        unalias cp   cp -f foo foo copy   alias cp  cp -i      Not the most beautiful code  but easy to set and efficient  I also check the alias is already set back with a simple     alias  grep cp

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As other answers have stated  this could happend if cp is an alias of cp -i   You can append a   before the cp command to use it without alias    cp -fR source target

User · Answer

This is probably caused by cp being already aliased to something like cp -i  Calling cp directly should work    bin cp -rf  zzz zzz    xxx xxx   Another way to get around this is to use the yes command   yes   cp -rf  zzz zzz    xxx xxx

User · Answer

If you want to keep alias at the global level as is and just want to change for your script   Just use   alias cp cp  and then write your follow up commands

User · Answer

It is not cp -i  If you do not want to be asked for confirmation  it is cp -n  for example   cp -n src dest   Or in case of directories folders is   cp -nr src dir dest dir

User · Answer

-n is  not to overwrite  but his question is totally opposite what you replied for    To avoid this confirmation you can simply run the cp command wiht absolute path  it will avoid the alias    bin cp sourcefile destination

User · Answer

You can do yes   cp -rf xxx yyy  but my gutfeeling says that if you do it as root - your  bashrc or  profile has an alias of cp to cp -i  most modern systems  primarily RH-derivatives  do that to root profiles    You can check existing aliases by running alias at the command prompt  or which cp to check aliases only for cp   If you do have an alias defined  running unalias cp will abolish that for the current session  otherwise you can just remove it from your shell profile   You can temporarily bypass an alias and use the non-aliased version of a command by prefixing it with    e g   cp whatever

User · Answer

you can use this command as well   cp -ru  zzz zzz    xxx xxx  it would update your existing file with the newer one though

User · Answer

cp is usually aliased like this  alias cp  cp -i      i e  ask questions of overwriting   if you are sure that you want to do the overwrite then use this    bin cp  lt arguments here gt  src dest

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cp -u     cp --update       also works

User · Answer

So I run into this a lot because I keep cp aliased to cp -iv  and I found a neat trick  It turns out that while -i and -n both cancel previous overwrite directives  -f does not  However  if you use -nf it adds the ability to clear the -i  So   cp -f  foo    bar   lt -- Prompt cp -nf  foo    bar  lt -- No Prompt   Pretty neat huh   necropost

User · Answer

Another way to call the command without the alias is to use the command builtin in bash   command cp -rf  zzz zzz

[linux] How to force cp to overwrite without confirmation

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