Dockerfile COPY instruction description is misleading

[SetTrend]

Is this a docs issue?

• My issue is about the documentation content or website

Type of issue

Information is incorrect

Description

At this time, the documentation on the Dockerfile COPY command reads:

COPY has two forms. The latter form is required for paths containing whitespace.

[COPY](https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy) [OPTIONS] <src> ... <dest>
[COPY](https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy) [OPTIONS] ["<src>", ... "<dest>"]

This information is wrong, incomprehensive and misleading.

There are actually three (not two) different forms of the COPY command, and one is behaving different from the others:

COPY has a plethora of forms:

[COPY](https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy) [OPTIONS] <src> ... <dest>

The following forms are required for paths containing whitespace:

[COPY](https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy) [OPTIONS] "<src>" ... "<dest>"

[COPY](https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy) [OPTIONS] ["<src>", ... "<dest>"]

NB: The escape parser directive character is not adhered to when using the last form, which is a JSON array.

See: moby/moby/issues/47776: Dockerfile COPY instruction doesn't adhere to parser directive "escape"

Location

https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/#copy

Suggestion

Please amend the text as described above.

You may want to wait for the other issue to be resolved before addding the "NB: The escape parser directive character is not adhered to when using the last form, which is a JSON array." to each Dockerfile instruction accepting a JSON array.