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Any different between the following two commands? One with *, one with no *. Which one will be the best to copy "whole" directory to include everything?
Okay doing
cp -r present/directory/ /desire/directory
is going to copy "directory" -- including it's contents -- to /desire/ whereas
cp -r present/directory/* /desire/directory
is going to copy the CONTENTS only of "directory" to /desire/directory, assuming the directory /desire/directory exists. If /desire/directory does not exist the command will return an error to that effect and you will first have to manually create the directory.
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