Copying and moving files

Copy file1 and name it file2

cp /home/des/file1 file2

Copy recursively all files beginning with a . to the profiles.backup folder

cp -r .?*  profiles.backup

Move file1 to file2 , if file 2 does not exist file1 is just renamed to file2, if file2 does exist then file1 is moved to file2

mv /home/des/file1 file2

To move 3 files to a directory

mv file1 file2 file3 directory

To mv only when the source file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing.

mv -u /home/des/* /home/des_backup

Copy all files and folders including hidden files from one directory to another

Say i have a folder /home/temp and want to copy everything in it to  a new folder called new

cd /home

mkdir /home/new

cp -r /home/temp/.      /home/new

This will copy all files/folder recursively from /home/temp in to the already existing folder /home/new

If you want to keep all file structure/permissions/symlinks intact you can use tar

tar c source | (cd target && tar x )