Re: cp incompatible with older versions!

[Jim Meyering]

Steven Scholz <address@hidden> wrote:
> the cp from recent coreutils is not compatible with cp from "GNU fileutils 
> 4.0.36"
> package(as found on RH 7.1).
>
> The old "cp -pr README.txt README_lang foo/bar/README.txt /tmp" would
> copy three files but would overwrite the first README.txt with the
> content of foo/bar/README.txt without further notice.
>
> But newer versions will complain or fail:
>
> RH-8.0:               cp (fileutils) 4.1.9
>
> -> cp -pr README.txt README_lang foo/bar/README.txt /tmp
> cp: warning: overwriting just-created `/tmp/README.txt' with 
> `foo/bar/README.txt'
>
> RH-9:         cp (coreutils) 4.5.3
>
> -> cp -pr README.txt README_lang foo/bar/README.txt /tmp
> cp: warning: overwriting just-created `/tmp/README.txt' with 
> `foo/bar/README.txt'
>
> SuSE 8.2:     cp (coreutils) 4.5.8
>
> -> cp -pr README.txt README_lang foo/bar/README.txt /tmp
> cp: will not overwrite just-created `/tmp/README.txt' with 
> `foo/bar/README.txt'
>
> Is that a bug or a feature!?

It's a feature.

Would you prefer to have cp silently succeed?
That would be bad.
Then the user might think it's ok to remove the
files that s/he thinks have been successfully copied.