An object is some bytes plus a key: its full name inside the bucket. A key can contain slashes, and that is where people get confused.

No folders

css/style.css is one object whose key happens to contain a slash. There is no folder called css. Listings draw the part before a slash as a folder anyway, because it makes long lists readable.

Copying in

aws s3 cp index.html s3://monster-market-1nlie8d/index.html

cp copies from the first place to the second. Here the first is a file on your machine and the second is a key in the bucket. A key with slashes works the same way: s3://monster-market-1nlie8d/css/style.css.

Listing

aws s3 ls s3://monster-market-1nlie8d/

                           PRE css/
2026-10-20 09:14:02        213 index.html

With a bucket after it, ls lists the keys. PRE (prefix) marks keys that start with css/.

Copying out and deleting

aws s3 cp s3://monster-market-1nlie8d/index.html copy.html

Turn the two places around and cp downloads.

aws s3 rm s3://monster-market-1nlie8d/old.txt

rm deletes one object. There is no bin to recover it from (Chapter 5 shows how versioning keeps old copies).