What is -cp command in hadoop How it works

Question

Copying file from one hdfs location to another using -cp command

Command - hadoop fs -cp -p /user/cloudera/data/new.txt /user/cloudera/data1 (Without creating 'data1' directory before using above command)

When -ls command is used to see the file in the directory data1- I do not see the file.

Is it mandatory to create a directory and then copy?
As with the current case explained above I did not get any error.

Answer 1

/user/cloudera/data1 is not a directory, it is the file that you copied. That is why there is no error.

If you want a directory containing that file, then yes, you need to hadoop fs -mkdir