Linux cp command is not silent

Question

I know with a -f cp should be silent but it's not! I do

cp -rf Functional Functionalssssssss

and if Functional does not exist, it says cannot stat 'Functional'... but I just don't want to see the error message!! I want to handle them myself

Answer 1

The cannot stat... output is actually being send to stderr, not stdout. For the specific example you provide in the question, the following will suppress the error output by redirecting stderr to /dev/null:

cp -rf Functional Functionalssssssss 2>/dev/null

As well, at least for the version of cp on my Debian Linux server, -f is not a universal 'silence' flag. It's instead a synonym for --force, meaning that cp will silently obliterate any existing destination file before copying.

Answer 2

If you are using bash or sh(posix standard), [ -f file ] && cp file target is what you want.

This one will check if the file exists and copy it. Say goodbye to errors.