Linux commands to copy one file to many files

Question

Is there a one-line command/script to copy one file to many files on Linux?

cp file1 file2 file3

copies the first two files into the third.

Answer 1

The simplest/quickest solution I can think of is a for loop:

for target in file2 file3 do; cp file1 "$target"; done

A dirty hack would be the following (I strongly advise against it, and only works in bash anyway):

eval 'cp file1 '{file2,file3}';'

Answer 2

Does

cp file1 file2 ; cp file1 file3

count as a "one-line command/script"? How about

for file in file2 file3 ; do cp file1 "$file" ; done

?

Or, for a slightly looser sense of "copy":

tee <file1 file2 file3 >/dev/null

Answer 3

just for fun, if you need a big list of files:

tee <sourcefile.jpg targetfiles{01-50}.jpg >/dev/null- Kelvin Feb 12 at 19:52

But there's a little typo. Should be:

tee <sourcefile.jpg targetfiles{01..50}.jpg >/dev/null

And as mentioned above, that doesn't copy permissions.

Answer 4

for FILE in "file2" "file3"; do cp file1 $FILE; done

Answer 5

You can improve/simplify the for approach (answered by @ruakh) of copying by using ranges from bash brace expansion:

for f in file{1..10}; do cp file $f; done

This copies file into file1, file2, ..., file10.

Resource to check:

• http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/expansion/brace#ranges

Answer 6

You can use standard scripting commands for that instead:

Bash:

 for i in file2 file3 ; do cp file1 $i ; done