Re: /bin/cp and operator precedence of -i over -f, coreutuils 5.2.1

[Paul Eggert]

Ken Johanson <address@hidden> writes:

> Recent vesions of /bin/cp seem to differ from mv and rm in that -f no
> longer takes precedence over -i. This has the effect of not being able
> to override ...
>
>     alias cp='cp -i'

Unfortunately POSIX requires the current behavior; see
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/cp.html

You should be able to work around the problem by using 'cp
--reply=yes' instead of 'cp -f'; does that work for your situation?
If so, perhaps 'cp' should have a short option that is equivalent to
--reply=yes, as a convenience.  ('cp -Y' perhaps?)