I'm trying to copy files to the current directory using a bash script.

In order to handle paths that need escaping a variable is used that is escaped and then supplied to the cp command.

The cp command is complaining with:

usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file target_file
       cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file ... target_directory

I know what that means but I cannot understand why that happens.

Here is the code:

z="/a/b/c d e f.txt"
y=`printf %q "$z"`
cp $y x.txt      # not working as expected
echo cp $y x.txt # output is "cp /a/b/c\ d\ e\ f.txt x.txt"