Docker: Copying files from Docker container to host

In order to copy a file from a container to the host, you can use the command
docker cp :/file/path/within/container /host/path/target

Here’s an example:
$ sudo docker cp goofy_roentgen:/out_read.jpg .

Here goofy_roentgen is the container name I got from the following command:
$ sudo docker ps

CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
1b4ad9311e93 bamos/openface “/bin/bash” 33 minutes ago Up 33 minutes 0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp goofy_roentgen

You can also use (part of) the Container ID. The following command is equivalent to the first
$ sudo docker cp 1b4a:/out_read.jpg .

You do not need to use docker run.
You can do it with docker create.
From the docs:

The docker create command creates a writeable container layer over the specified image and prepares it for running the specified command. The container ID is then printed to STDOUT. This is similar to docker run -d except the container is never started.

So, you can do:
docker create -ti –name dummy IMAGE_NAME bash
docker cp dummy:/path/to/file /dest/to/file
docker rm -f dummy

Here, you never start the container. That looked beneficial to me.