Hello! I hope I wrote this in the right section... I was searching everywhere on how to do as the title indicates, maybe I was googling wrong or something, but I couldn't find the answer. It's for a class homework but I can't seem to remember the teacher demonstrating this.

It goes something like this:
-From the repc/repd directory, copy all files from the repb directory to the repc/repd directory with only one command, without the words repc or repd appearing in the command.

I believe the first step is to do cd ~/repc/repd, but afterwards, I'm completely lost...

[Using RedHat CentOS7, if it changes anything]

I don't care much about which subforum, I only look at whats new

but, I believe you go the correct one

lesson 1, code tags

[code]
write your code example here
[/code]



well, that would be incorrect, the question was clear about one command

it is an awful question, but I understand what they are demonstrating

there is a few ways of doing it
I shall show you the wrong way


that works but fails the question
but I hope it jogs a memory

I think the problem wants you to understand how to indicate "here" in a command.

the "." means "the directory I'm in" You can see that if you cd to a directory, then type
ls -la
...you'll see two entries at the top of the output:
The . is the directory you're in and the .. is the parent of that directory.

I'm not sure what you'd use for a search term to find something that would explain that.

maybe the question got mashed up somewhere

but I read "only one command"

cd and cp is two commands


and it is files in the dir, not the dir

the question is to demonstrate an understanding of wildcards
hence the restriction

to stick two fingers up at teacher

but that is going to get you caught at cheating

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content...-matching-bash

I agree with scasey the question is about parent directories and dot notation. As always, we will help you but not provide the answers.

Yes. Only one command "From the repc/repd directory," which I read "as after being in that directory"...so after the cd -- which the OP had already correctly figured out.

And Yes, my example was incorrect. I've edited it to copy all the files.
As originally posted, the response would have been and no copy would have happened, as a cp command with no options will not copy a directory.

I stand by my evaluation that it was about learning what "." means.

Not sure about the pattern matching, and I suspect you're correct that that would not follow the spirit of the question...I'll read up on that, but that cp command would try to copy from ~/repc/repd/repb/* (although, upon review of the OP, it doesn't specifically state where repb is...I presumed it was ~/repb, but we don't really know)

1 members found this post helpful.

I assumed the dirs were in /repa/
and we were in /repa/

and wanted to move the files to /repa/repc/repd/

ahh, yeah, your right


so

we are in repd
and the files are in ../../


I still prefer my version

1 members found this post helpful.

You left out a rather important bit about the directory structure: the relationship between repb, repc, and repd. (Well, you did tell us that repd is under repc.)

If they're not all nested, what about:
If the directories are "repb/repc/repd":
I'm not sure if that qualifies as one command, though. You have to get to the "repc/repd" directory somehow. Heck, with practice you can write gnarly while/do with complex `if-else-fi's as a "single command" before you finally press Enter.

Snarky answer:
Only one command. Copy via dragging and dropping. :^D

It doesn't. (Although Red Hat has done some strange things over the years that have wound up making their way into most other distributions, so maybe...)

HTH...

Actually, if you read the OP carefully, he doesn't mention the location of the repb dir, so it's not necessarily about relative dirs (although you could do it that way).
I'd also argue that given
cd'ing into 'repc/repd' initially is not only allowed, but indeed implied ...

if you read the question carefully you see cd ~/repc/repd
which creates the ambiguity which lead me to the dir struct
and cd is one command, cp is another
together that are more than one
implied is that you start in repd
but in my mind ../../repb/ was too simple, which is why I invented this scenario
that it was about wildcards

but now I see the repa/repb/repc/repd clearly after correcting the question
and ignoring the cd ~/repc/repd

Sorry for the late clarification, the directories are as go ~/repd ~/repc/repd
That was my bad!

and where do you start?

do you have the full question, verbatim?

I *need* to know now