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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.

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19 Answers 19

Reset to default
1445

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

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5 Comments

Also, be wary -- even if the alias isn't directly written in .bashrc, if anything else this file calls ends up calling something else which manipulates the alias for cp, you will run into this behavior.
By "modern systems" he means RHEL/centos/fedora and perhaps something else, Debian/Ubuntu does not alias cp. I prefer RHEL on the server and used Fedora for nearly a decade, but the community support of Ubuntu and the switch back to Gnome wooed me after Nvidia killed my Fedora install. I'm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about it.
@RayFoss Added a (primarily RH-derivatives) remark :)
after doing unalias cp and copying whatever you need to copy, you can set alias back to its default by doing alias cp='cp -i'. After which, run alias cp so you can verifiy that it's back to default alias.
A side note: a common mistake is not to add the "*" part in the source directory and copying the directory under the destination instead.
472

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
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8 Comments

yes, I did unalias cp -i , now its working.. Thank you for your valuable reply.
I love that unix provides the yes command. Hilarious. And someday I may use it.
yes it was aliased, nice catch :) You can use \cp to call the original cp, easier than remembering the path /bin/cp
quick alternative: \cp
another way for using cp without defined alias is using it inside quote sign. example: 'cp' -rf /zzz/* /xxx
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159

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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@zhouji The backlash disables the alias, as stated in my answer. So instead of invoking the alias cp, \cp will invoke the command cp. This appears to be the equivalent of running command cp.
101

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 permanently remove the alias, check in which file the alias is defined (.bashrc, .profile, etc., for details see the documentation of the shell you use); then remove the according line from the file, and start a new shell.

To undefine the alias for an existing shell session, use:

$ unalias cp

To temporarily use the unaliased version of cp for a single command execution, you can prefix it with \, like so:

$ \cp -rf /foo/* /bar
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5 Comments

yes, I did unalias cp -i , now its working.. Thank you for your valuable reply.
it is just "unalias cp"
also if youre using oh-my-zsh, this the cp -i alias might be coming from common-aliases
in zsh at least, you can override the alias by using ls directly, like so: \cp -f file.txt overwritten.txt. I tend to want to maintain the alias for day-to-day usage, but in certain functions and aliases, I may want to overwrite the behavior.
@verboze This helped me too as \cp appeared to do the same as zsh in bash (on RockyLinux 9). Thx.
74

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
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6 Comments

As you said, others have already stated this. Why did this get 45 upvotes?
@phil294 I guess this is the easiest way without modifying alias or removing the cp alias which may be useful for other usages. `` Its very useful here.
@phil294 can you link the similar answer that you think was created before this? Thanks
@ValerioBozz almost all of them? come on man...
even the accepted one has the same information in it (plus more) and was created 5 years prior
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21

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  <-- Prompt
cp -nf /foo/* /bar <-- No Prompt

Pretty neat huh? /necropost

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7 Comments

It doesn't overwrite the file, just suppresses the message
@Herrgott are you saying that -f doesn't force an overwrite? If so I would expect a permissions issue. The point of OP was to clear the effect of the -i directive making the removal not interactive.
yes, it doesn't work in my case. *user@pc-1250* /tmp/ttt: cp -f -- a/* b/ cp: overwrite 'b/0'? . If i call it with -nf it won't ask for overwrite and won't overwrite (only copies missing files)
Coreutils v8.31
Yeah looks like Coreutils works differently than the cp command on my mac. They explicitly ignore -f when -n is used according to gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#cp-invocation you might try --remove-destination instead of -f
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20

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

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17

The simplest way for me:

yes | cp source destination
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10

you can use this command as well:

cp -ru /zzz/zzz/* /xxx/xxx

it would update your existing file with the newer one though.

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10

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

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1 Comment

Thanks, working with ubuntu 21.10 cp -rf source/source_file.ext target/target_file.ext
9

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 <arguments here> src dest
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8 
cp -u ...
cp --update ...

also works.

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6

Another way to call the command without the alias is to use the command builtin in bash.

command cp -rf /zzz/zzz/*

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6

-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

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4

For me, the simpler the better. This way does not show STDOUT:

yes | cp -rf source destination >/dev/null 2>&1
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1 Comment

It may not be the best solution for the test case displayed here, but it helped me a lot in my own context. Thanks!
3

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.

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0

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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0

If this is a small text file, you may consider this way too:

cat my.cnf > /etc/my.cnf

Not sure about the efficiency or side effects for large or binary files.

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-3

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
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1 Comment

Others were stating that the user-facing cp was symlinked to cp -i by the system, meaning they were trying to overcome the default and force an overwrite. It sounds like you may have confused that for being the suggested syntax, but -n will prevent an overwrite.

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