Answer by Jens for Is it a UUOC (useless use of cat) to redirect one file to another?

In addition to all the good answers, you can avoid a UUOC by simulating a cat:

awk 1 file1 > file2   # For line-oriented text, not binaries.
dd if=file1 of=file2  # Works for binary files, too.
# many more geeky ways.

These commands do not copy the file meta data, as a plain cp would.