In a machine, under cisa3309 folder there are two sub-folders named bash1 and bash2 so your paths will look like /cisa3309/bash1 /cisa3309/bash 2 Both bash1 and bash2 sub-folders has a file data.txt . Write a bash copy statement to copy the the data.txt in bash1 to data.txt in bash2 with a warning message to the user asking to confirm overwrite attempt