Bash: what is the difference between `cp fileA fileB` and `cp -- fileA fileB`

Question

What is the difference between cp fileA fileB and cp -- fileA fileB in Linux?

Answer 1

-- specifies the end of options. In your specific example this shouldn't make a difference but if you were using filename globbing such as: cp * fileB to find a file and you had a file in your directory named -R for example your command could potentially be:

cp -R dirA fileB

Which obviously wouldn't be the desired outcome. This is especially important when using commands like rm.