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bug#61105: cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: bug#61105: cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2023 12:12:28 -0800
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.4.2

Better, I think, would be to change cp -n to be compatible with FreeBSD, where 'cp -n A B' exits with status 1 if B exists. This matches what FreeBSD 'cp -i A B' does when you say "no". This would be more useful than what GNU cp does, and the FreeBSD cp -i behavior conforms to POSIX whereas GNU cp -i (I think accidentally) does not. This would be simpler than adding a fatal --no-clobber, and would encourage portability a bit.

The reason it's a POSIX conformance issue is that POSIX says exit status zero means "All files were copied successfully." which "cp -n A B" does not do when B exists.

Similarly for 'mv' (though FreeBSD mv -i does not conform to POSIX here, unfortunately).





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