cp hosts backup/hosts.bak did not work [closed]

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I was reading a book on UNIX when I came across this question. The command

    cp hosts backup/hosts.bak

did not work even though all files exist. Name three possible reasons. I could think of one only and that too I am not sure about. According to me one reason can be the current directory is not writable by the user. Please help me out to know the actual reasons.

Answer 1

1. backup/ is not writeable by the user
2. hosts is not readable by the user
3. the disk where backup/ is located is full
4. hosts is a directory, not a file