Apple’s Terminal is a direct link to the underpinnings of your Mac’s operating system, and within it is access to all of the possibilities available to your computer. To interact with the Terminal, you only need to enter a command and retrieve the data you want—there are no multi-page windows, clicking all over the screen to set parameters, or waiting for the application to correlate the data it’s retrieved into a specific file format.

Anyone can launch the Terminal and begin using it, though many users are content to use the GUI to manipulate data. Power users who want more efficient ways to perform tasks, as well as any user who wants more control over their productivity, should check out these 10 Terminal commands.

Cp/Scp
Description
The Cp command is used primarily to copy one or more files and folders from one location to another. The Scp command is used to copy files or folders securely between hosts on a network. The latter uses SSH to encrypt the transfer process and will prompt for authentication if it is required when establishing connectivity between the source and destination targets.

Usage
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-pvX] Source_file(s) Target_Folder
scp [-12346BCpqrv] [-c cipher] [-F ssh_config] [-i identity_file] [-l limit][-o ssh_option] [-P port] [-S program] [[user@]host1:]file1 … [[user@]host2:]file2

Examples
Copy a file from one folder to another on the same computer
cp /path/to/source/file.ext /path/to/destination

Copy a folder and all the directories it contains (recursive) to another directory on the same computer
cp -R /path/to/source/folder /path/to/destination

Securely copy a file using SSH protocol 2 over IPv4 only to a remote computer
scp -2 -4 user1@server.locall:/path/to/source/file.ext user2@server.local:/path/to/destination

Securely copy a directory using 3DES encryption cipher to a remote computer
scp -c 3des -R user2@server.local:/path/to/source/folder user1@server.local:/path/to/destination