file recovery - overwrote ~/bin folder

Somehow I accidentally overwrote my ~/bin.

I typed the command: $ cp /home/dsg/Downloads/sbt-launch-0.7.4.jar ~/bin

I was trying to copy the file into my bin folder but instead overwrote the folder.

Now:

$ cd ~/bin
bash: cd: /home/dsg/bin: Not a directory

And:

$ diff /home/dsg/Downloads/sbt-launch-0.7.4.jar ~/bin

Shows no differences.

What do I do?

Answer

When you copy a file using the command you used:

$ cp /home/dsg/Downloads/sbt-launch-0.7.4.jar ~/bin

different things happen depending on what the target is.

1) ~/bin is a directory

The file will be copied into the ~/bin directory keeping the original name of the file.

2) ~/bin is a regular file

The file ~/bin will be overwritten by the source file.

3) ~/bin does not exist

The source file will be copied to the destination name creating a new file.

By default the ~/bin directory doesn't exist, so unless you created a directory at some time in the past called ~/bin then option 3 will be what happened. If there was a ~/bin in existance, then for the cp command to overwrite it it must have been a regular file and not a directory.

You should delete the ~/bin file and create a directory with:

$ rm ~/bin
$ mkdir ~/bin

Then you can copy the jar file into it with the same command you used before.

(Thanks to @grawity and @garyjohn on whose comments to the question this answer was based upon.)