In what way does the ADD directive differ from the COPY directive in terms of functionality?

The ADD directive is indeed different from the COPY directive in that it has additional functionality, particularly the ability to automatically extract compressed files (such as tar, gzip, or zip archives) when they are added to the image. This means that if you use ADD with an archive file, the contents of that archive will be unpacked into the image, making it convenient for situations where you want to include multiple files or a directory structure without having to manually extract them first.

This capability is what distinguishes ADD from COPY, which strictly copies files and directories from the source to the destination in the image without any additional processing. Because of this added functionality, ADD can be useful in specific scenarios where file extraction is needed, streamlining the process of preparing the image.

While other choices might imply certain limitations or characteristics of the ADD directive, they don't accurately capture the distinguishing features that separate it from the COPY directive. For example, the ability to copy files from the host system is not exclusive to ADD; both directives can accomplish this. Similarly, there are no restrictions on Docker versions that would render ADD unavailable, nor does ADD have any inherent limitation related to only handling text files.