# cp

6 Hacker News commenters recommended cp and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Standard Unix copy command that is easy to explain over the phone and well established. Critics agree its default options are poor and it has no undo.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to explain to newbies (1 comments): "The CLI is also infinitely easier to help newbies use over the phone!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871181))
- Intuitive with minimal extra commands (1 comments): "cp can do it intuitively and with minimal extra commands" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943642))
- Well established Unix toolchain (1 comments): "well established and solid unix toolchain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859511))

## What people warn about

- Bad defaults, not recursive by default (2 comments): "For cp, the root cause is that it has bad default options" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48006746)) "recursive by default would have been much more intuitive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943509))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "cp", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cp/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).