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If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat files which names begin with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~

Add the D qualifier if you also want to consider hidden files (dot-files):

cp -- *(D.On[1,4]} ~

If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat files which names begin with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~

Add the D qualifier if you also want to consider hidden files (dot-files):

cp -- *(D.On[1,4]) ~

If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat files which names begin with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~

If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat files which names begin with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~

Add the D qualifier if you also want to consider hidden files (dot-files):

cp -- *(D.On[1,4]} ~

If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat file which names begins with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~

If you are using zsh you can enclose in parenthesis () a list of so called glob qualifiers which select desired files. In your case, that would be

cp *(On[1,4]) ~/

Here On sorts file names alphabetically in reverse order and [1,4] takes only first 4 of them.

You can make this more robust by selecting only plain files (excluding directories, pipes etc.) with ., and also by appending -- to cp command in order to treat files which names begin with - properly, so:

cp -- *(.On[1,4]) ~