I wrote the following command in windows XP's command shell and something strange happened: C:\Folder1> copy sample.txt : Because of my typing mistake, I wrote ":" instead of "D:" ... but it copied the sample.txt to somewhere I cant find! I searched my whole HDD for sample.txt but the only instance of this file is the original one which is in C:\Folder1. Do you know where ":" path actually is in Win-XP command shell? You might say ":" is current path and the file has been copied onto itself but look at this: If you run that command for the first time, this will be the result: 1 file copied. but the next time you run that command it will ask you: overwrite sample.txt? (yes/no/all) So if it were writing the file onto itself, both results would have to be the same but they aren't. Thanks in advance for your help.